In The Path of The Skinwalker
by RedMyst
Summary: After accepting a position at a prestigious university, Dr. Thomas Oliver finds himself unraveling a dark secret about his family's history involving the supernatural, and the Navajo nation.
1. Chapter 1

Title: In The Path of The Skin-Walker

Author: RedMyst

Rating: M

Spoilers: MMPR and MMPR:DT

Summary: After accepting a position at a prestigious university, Dr. Thomas Oliver finds himself unraveling a dark secret about his family's history involving the supernatural, and the darkest secrets of the Navajo nation.

Disclaimer: I don't own them.

Author's Note: Okay, so here's what happened – the story was destroyed. I lost everything on my laptop, everything I had written, and I was so pissed off I deleted everything off of it. Then, I recovered, so did my Beta, and we decided to take another crack at ITPOTS since we agreed this was a story that deserved to be told. We went with our original idea to write this series from the perspective of an alternate version for adults, much in the same way the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys' series were revamped in the late '80s to target a different generation and demographic, and we cleaned up this version a lot so that it reads better. That last part was mainly for me because I am a writer in real life, and one seeking an MA in English which means it's super important that whatever I crank out is not just decent but good. So feedback, lots and lots of feedback, and of course – enjoy the story.

_August 1st, 2011_

"_...sexy baby, you drive me crazy..."_

Dr. Thomas Oliver cranked the stereo in his black jeep, the sleek vehicle darting past the oversized novelty sign welcoming him to the State of Arizona. His cross-country drive was the last step in closing a very long chapter in his life. For the past fourteen years, he'd been a power ranger. Wearing the most colors; and possessing a decade's worth of experience with friendly and hostile alien forces. Experience second only to William Cranston. If he were honest with himself, it wasn't something he would have volunteered to do, but higher powers – good and evil – had other plans. After a seemingly uneventful summer in the So-Cal community of Angel Grove County, he was on his way home from his first day of high school when Rita Repulsa kidnapped, brainwashed, and forced him to become her evil Green Ranger.

Tommy's mouth turned down at the corners. His actions while under the witch's control were still a taboo subject, even after almost twenty years. Most teenagers didn't end their last period with hand-to-hand combat, the attempted murder of five classmates, and millions of dollars in property damage during his rampage in the Dragonzord. It didn't make for a great first impression, which was why even though he'd been the one to make the offer, it took Jason – his oldest and closest friend - a long time to warm-up, trust, or even accept him.

Smirking he looked over at the lone photograph, hanging from a lanyard strung around his rearview mirror. It was a picture of the original team, Tommy's hazel eyes zeroing in on the smiling face of red ranger. He still remembered some of the asinine fights they used to get into, especially the one right before the ninja competition where they kept trying to upstage one another. Fortunately, Zordon had stepped in, and their quest to retrieve the new pistols to fight Rita's super putties became something more.

Not only did they learn to work together, but during the hike they'd talked. Jason learned that Tommy's loner tendencies came from spending two years in foster care, along with his sister Erica. Tommy discovered that the bulk of Jason's surliness came from his issues with his father, a beat cop with Angel Grove Police Department. Apparently, the elder Scott wanted his son to be some kind of he-man, and that wasn't Jason's style. On the upside, his desire to 'man-up' his son led to karate, which was something Jason actually enjoyed. So did Tommy, which gave them their first common ground. In time, Zordon's plan worked, and they became close friends. Now, Jason was an emergency room physician, and a resident of Arizona's second-largest city. Now that he was going to be living there, Tommy looked forward to renewing their friendship once he was settled in. It was still hard for him to believe that his time as a ranger was over. Of all the original team members, he was the only one who'd continued on, eventually assuming the role of mentor, and leading a new generation of defenders. In hindsight, it was a sign that he'd come full-circle. It was time to start a new chapter. That spring, before the end of break, he turned in his notice, and before the last bell rang had a new job lined up with Macalester University.

The two-hundred year-old campus had an impressive reputation as being one of the best academic institutions, rivaled only by its direct competitor and contemporary, Berkeley. HR was desperate to conclude a two-year search for someone to head up their Paleontology Department, and apparently he had what they were looking for. The interview panel had announced their decision to hire less than twenty minutes into his interview via Skype.

It had raised his parent's eyebrows, for sure, Tommy seeking their counsel when it became clear he really would have to move, but despite some initial misgivings it felt 'right'. He accepted the position, suffered through a terrible goodbye party thrown by Principal Randall, and packed up his house. In constant contact with HR, he learned that he was a shoe-in because none of the previous applicants were able to successfully work with the Navajo community. That last part was huge, especially given the college's near-incestuous relationship with Arizona's First People. However, that was where Tommy had the advantage. Despite being adopted by a _Belegana_ family, Tommy had been immersed in his Navajo heritage, and his surrogate family encouraged and supported his desire to explore his culture. The Oliver's going so far as to send both him and his sister Erica to classes to learn their people's dialect, enabling him to fluently converse with Elders who only spoke English as a second language.

It made him an asset, a _valuable one_, and they'd sealed the deal by offering him a two-year tenure track instead of the traditional five. It was the chance of a lifetime. Finally, Tommy would have the opportunity to settle into a quiet existence now that his days of piloting Zords, and crushing monsters were over. True, there were days he missed the action, but at thirty-one, and in the early stages of his career he was ready to try on some of that "normal stuff" Adam was always raving about.

Tommy cracked a grin as he thought about his former teammate, who just happened to live a stone's throw away from his "new" place. In truth, it was the house owned by his natural parents, originally left to his late older brother, David True Heart, who then willed it to his two younger siblings. The property had sat untouched, save their annual drive to make sure it hadn't burnt down, or become a haven for mice, for more than thirty years. Now that he was going to be living there full-time, Tommy was having the place renovated. The project financed through the sale of his home in Reefside. Apparently, equipping the place with an underground lab was the best idea he'd ever had, selling the nondescript one-story ranch for a cool 28.5 mil, _after _taxes and closing fees. Although, having spent the majority of his life independently wealthy, the money was an afterthought.

Braking as the road dipped down a steep hill, Tommy fingered the arrowhead he wore through the thin material of his red shirt. Arizona was the ancestral homeland of the Navajo people, and the key to figuring himself out as he faced down some of his personal demons. Anyone who knew him was aware of the overwhelming sense of guilt he carried with him, 'The Infamous Oliver Guilt', as Jason called it, and it shadowed him even on his happiest day. Tommy knew it was because of the circumstances surrounding his natural parent's deaths, the ancient yellow police reports were his only link to the night night his father killed his mother. Supposedly, Tommy and his sister were in the room when it happened, but he couldn't remember, and Erica never said if she could. For her, it was a closed subject. Their brother didn't know what happened either, David had escaped by running out the backdoor which had been left unlocked, and heading for a neighbor's to get help.

Unfortunately, having no memories didn't stop them from having nightmares, or being unable to sleep at night. Erica slept with every light in her house blazing, and never in her bedroom. She was always in the living room, on the couch with her dog. Tommy sometimes woke up lying on the corner of his bedroom on the floor, apparently making a nest for himself out of blankets and pillows during the night. It wasn't normal, they weren't free from what happened, and frankly they were sick of it.

Letting out a sigh, he felt his grip tighten on the arrowhead. Whatever that black hole was hiding, it was bad. According to the reports their father had tried to use him in a sacrifice during a Witchery Way ceremony. It was a forbidden rite practiced only by Navajo shaman who started using their knowledge for evil, breaking cultural and spiritual taboos in order to gain dark power. They were the most feared and reviled people in Navajo society, even now reservation police had to deal with the occasional murder of someone either targeted by, or suspected of being a Witch. According to David, there was no such thing as 'suspicion' when the tribe took justice into their own hands. Tommy didn't know how he felt about that, but he knew that if he had the chance he would have put down his father. Especially, given what the rite was designed to do.

According to legend if a Witch became _clizyati -_ pure evil – performance of the Witchery Way ceremony would endow them with the powers of the _yee naadlooshii_ - the skin-walker. The practitioner would have the ability to change shape into whatever animal they desired, and visit whatever horror that suited their twisted whims on the innocent. Modern Navajo youth who normally scoffed at their people's seemingly outdated traditions and beliefs, didn't crack wise about the skin-walker. Doing so could invite the Witch to cause harm to the speaker, their family, or respective clan within the Navajo nation.

This unholy creature so feared by his people, himself included, was what his father was trying to become. When David was reintroduced into their lives, he gave Tommy and Erica a better idea about what happened.

Joseph Red Eagle, according to his surviving victims, was alleged to be the serial killer who'd plagued Tucson off and on during the summer of 1984. Their mother Nancy, a seasoned detective with the Tucson Police Department, had been working the case in conjunction with the FBI who'd been called in by the BIA once it was clear that the situation was beyond the scope of local law enforcement. Their mother was a powerful woman respected by both the Navajo and the _Belegana _– whites. Her husband, on the other hand, was a man with a reputation. Back on the reservation, he was a known petty criminal, but had straightened out after marrying Nancy. Then, the summer of 1984 happened, and Joseph decided to take the next step in his practice of Navajo witchcraft. To gain the power of the skin-walker, the Witch had to kill a loved one, or an immediate family member.

The chosen sacrifice was Tommy, and probably would have succeeded if David hadn't fled to their closest neighbor. Nancy was twenty minutes ahead of her backup, stormed the house, and allegedly walked in on her husband mid-rite. Despite being a trained law enforcement officer, despite years of experience fending off thugs and taking down suspects, Nancy Red Eagle died in the upstairs bedroom of her home defending her son from his father.

Disturbingly, that was the normal part. The rest was high strangeness.

When the police arrived they found her face-down in the center of a charred circle, her weapon lying nearby with its clip spent, and evidence of intense blasts of heat. Her husband, what was left of him, was burned to death, yet no source of fire was ever found. One side of the room was blackened down to the studs, yet the paneling behind his father was untouched. All of the glass in the second-story windows had shattered, yet the ones on the first floor were intact. Not even Billy could explain what was outlined in the yellowed documents, but when he shared his findings with his brother the elder Red Eagle's reasoning was simple – their father was a skin-walker, and best to leave it alone. Tommy still didn't know how he felt about that, but he wasn't afraid, not after all the weirdness he'd seen or experienced. Yet, that line of thought would have to wait, because there was another reason – a very important reason- for his relocation to Tucson.

Before the incident with Mercer, following the conclusion of his career as a stock-car racer, Kat Hillard divorced him. On some level Tommy was glad she'd found someone else, but for the most part he was happy to be rid of her. Not even two days after he came to in the hospital, she turned up with divorce papers for him to sign. Kat didn't want to risk spending her life tied to an invalid; she was accustomed to a certain standard of living, and Tommy could no longer provide. Now she was with some multi-millionaire, who looked like a Greek god, and wasn't scarred over thirty percent of his body. True, the tattoos he sported covered them, but underneath they were still there, and Kat 'didn't want to deal with that'.

Thankfully, his friends rallied around him, and kept him going after the blow-up with Kat. They were the same friends waiting for him in Tucson. Zack and Tanya were roughly one mile on a diagonal from Tommy's new place, and Jason two miles south in some grossly modern townhouse in the heart of an upscale neighborhood. Rocky DeSantos was the local recruiter for the Air Force, Adam Park lived less than three blocks north in a duplex he shared with Aisha, and…Kim.

"Oh, come on." The freeway, which had been clear only moments before, was now packed full of cars barely crawling across the parched blacktop. Apparently, some idiot cut off a tractor trailer causing it to jackknife, and backed up traffic for ten miles in both directions. The flashing blue and red lights, coupled with the green-vested officers rerouting traffic, reminded him of Trini.

Minus a short tryst with Kim, who dumped him like a hot rock after the incident with Divatox and Maligore, Jason had renewed his relationship with Trini, and the couple settled in Seattle after he graduated from med school. Two months before their wedding, Trini died in an accident. Another driver, who was tanked off his ass, hit her head on. The bastard only suffered a mild rug burn, while Trini had to be cut out of what was left of her Prius. By the time she arrived at the hospital, it was too late. Jason moved to Tucson a week after her funeral, and had been there ever since. Last year, the original red ranger had tried, unsuccessfully, to rekindle his relationship with Kim, but she turned him down. That didn't mean he wouldn't try again, and it was enough to motivate Tommy into action. If he was honest with himself, he was moving over twelve-hundred miles based on a maybe, but he justified it by using his parents. Tommy did need closure about that night, so did Erica, and if he just happened to work things out with Kim it would be the icing on the cake. Drumming his fingers on the steering wheel of his jeep, the paleontologist slowly inched passed the wreck, and floored it as soon as he was clear.

Kimberly Ann Hart was the last, best, and only reason why he'd finally worked up the courage to leave California. For the past sixteen years, since their breakup in high school, they had been caught in some kind of weird limbo. When Kat walked out, Kim walked in, staying with him during the majority of his recovery. Whenever some sort of hell broke loose, she was there, yet whenever he tried to get some kind of closure on their relationship, she gave him the slip.

Those days were over. Kim worked at Macalester in the Art Department, holding a MFA in Ceramics, and gaining notoriety for her work as a professional artist. Now that he was faculty, there was no way she could avoid him. Turning down the winding gravel driveway that led to his place, he was glad he'd made the decision to put a few thousand miles between himself, and the Zords scattered underneath or offshore from the Californian earth. The living room lights were on, which meant the caretaker his family had hired was on-site. The construction supplies he'd ordered had been delivered, and were neatly stacked around the property. Crunching to a stop, he stared out into the rapidly-sinking sun, a shadow falling across the valley behind his house as the last blood-red rays flared and died. For the first time in his life, he could deal with every day issues, and not -

"- weird alien shit." Climbing out, he grabbed one of the large duffel bags out of the jeep, and headed up to the porch. The young man pausing for a moment as the hairs stood on the back of his next, his eyes focusing through the thin lenses of his glasses on the wilderness surrounding his property. A crack to his left caused him to turn, just in time to see an owl in mid-flight. For a split-second he caught sight of its narrow white face, the black eyes piercing his own as it floated past like a white shadow. Watching the animal disappear into the gloom, he stepped onto the porch, only to stop as a loud 'whooshing' noise made him freeze. Looking about, Tommy rolled his eyes, and reminded himself that there hadn't been a putty attack for almost a decade. Shaking his head, he paused as the oval body of the owl drifted onto the narrow railing of the porch.

"Hello." To a Navajo, a visit from an owl was considered a bad omen since, like Coyote, Owl had a checkered past, and was typically portrayed as a trickster and harbinger of death. On the other hand, Erica's spirit animal was an owl, and Tommy took the animal's presence as a good sign since she was moving to Tucson to help him with the renovation. For several long minutes he watched as the creature lazily stretched out its wings, preening the silver feathers, and shaking its head several times before staring at him once more. If he didn't know any better he could have sworn the creature smiled, performing an odd little dance, coupled with several bobs of its head before fluttering off into the night. Smiling, Tommy watched it disappear into the purple haze of the long-dead sun, an odd peace settling over him as he stepped into the brightly-lit house.


	2. Chapter 2

Title: In The Path of The Skin-Walker

Author: RedMyst

Rating: M

Spoilers: MMPR and MMPR:DT

Disclaimer: I don't own them.

Author's Note: To answer some questions I've gotten in feedback, the words I use are actual Navajo, although I can't guarantee proper syntax. I will include translations in the next chapter.

_August 12th, 2011_

"_Chindi..." In the darkness of Tucson, a pair of burning red eyes watched as a young blonde woman, struggled to get the key into the lock of her car door. The twenty-something cursing darkly, as she tried to keep hold of her purse, three fat files, and her coat without dropping it all on the ground. Her slim body danced around in the black pupils of her stalker, whose gaze traced the graceful lines of her figure. She worked late, often, her 2005 Pontiac Grand Prix the only car left in the massive parking lot. Somewhere, there was a security guard out patrolling the well-manicured grounds of the fifteen-story glass building, but he was nowhere close. Isolated, without fear of repercussion, it would be easy to take her._

_Shifting, the predator crouched closer to the ground as it debated whether or not to pursue. On the one hand it would be quick, not much sport or struggle, but if the others found out there would be penance. Shaking the misshapen head, the dark figure drew back from the sharp curve of the woman's headlights, as she pulled out of the lot. Crawling down the embankment, the red eyes swung skyward as their owner weighed their options. Taking another kill, another public kill, on the heels of the one carried out just weeks before would only delay The Plan, and the beast did not want to be the one who messed up The Plan. _

_Sniffing the air, the red eyes closed as they focused on the faint scent of booze and urine drifting through the stale night air. Enhanced hearing paring away the world until they could hear the rustle of trash bags; and the clink of bottles as some beggar rummaged for something to eat. The hobo was a throwaway, someone who wouldn't be missed, and the perfect prey. Shoving their body through the nearby culvert running under the road, the creature used the noxious sludge to ease its progress through the narrow opening. It was halfway out when another scent slipped around the bum's, slamming bodily against the beast's memory._

"_Impossible…" The red eyes widened with fear, the creature crouching down into the sludge as it tried to find the source of the smell. Afraid, in the sick and terrible fashion reserved for predators, it waited quietly in the pipe, the mocking stench of the unseen tormentor fading in the breeze. Assured that it was indeed alone, the beast stepped out into the night, and pushed itself up on its deformed legs. Lifting its face to the moon, it hissed in sudden pain as its body clicked, popped, and snapped together. The hands and neck shrinking to a normal size, along with head which became that of a middle-aged woman with long, dirty blonde hair. _

_Reaching down into the muck, she pulled out the body of a recently-dead rat, and bit into the putrid flesh. Devouring the corpse, she wiped her blood-smeared face with the back of her hand, and then stepped into the shadows._

"_...it is time..." _


	3. Chapter 3

Title: In The Path of The Skin-Walker

Author: RedMyst

Rating: M

Spoilers: MMPR and MMPR:DT

Summary: After accepting a position at a prestigious university, Dr. Thomas Oliver finds himself unraveling a secret about his family's history involving the supernatural, and the Navajo nation.

Disclaimer: I don't own them.

Author's Note: There's a lot of setup in this chapter, kinda sets the mood for where we're going. Pay attention, because there are different clues that will come into play later on. Basically, treat each chapter like an episode, and every mini-chap featuring the bad guys as a mini-episode like the ones some shows have online. Blah, blame my Beta, it was his idea.

_August 23rd, 2011_

"Have chapters four and six read by next week, also I'd better not see what happened earlier on YouTube." Tommy watched the lecture hall empty out, before gathering his things from where he dumped them by the door. Normally, he wasn't so scattered, but the previous evening had left him sleep-deprived. Manuel, the caretaker hired to maintain his parent's property, had turned in his notice the night he arrived. The ancient Mexican pointing out where all the construction supplies were stored, how to key in the code for the security system, and patiently waiting for Tommy to sign the check before high-tailing it in his rusty pickup. It was the first time Tommy had ever been alone at the property, his previous visits accompanied by either Manuel, his adoptive parents, or his sister.

Back in California, his therapist, Dr. Beegay, had advised him to take things slow, and he had. The past several days were spent organizing, cleaning, and finally exploring. The last one was why he'd been up until two in the morning. Rummaging through the attic, he found some toys, and several boxes of his mother's old case files. He'd shoved those aside for later, focusing instead on the little wooden crate, and discovering a set of miniature robots made to look like dinosaurs. Examining them in the beam of his flash light, he realized they were identical to the zords he created with Anton Mercer. Relying on his paleontological skills, Tommy had carefully extracted them from their dusty prison, noting how every model corresponded to one of his mechanical creations, and laying them out neatly on the nearest crossbeam.

To think, buried underneath a blanket of filth in a darkened corner, was the source of his inspiration. It had been an emotional shock, one that stirred long-buried memories of his natural family. Alone, with no one to see, he allowed himself to cry. When he finally collected himself, it was after midnight, and by the time he'd finished cleaning and arranging the tiny models on the shelf above his bed it was a quarter to two.

"No wonder I ran into a door." Grimacing, Tommy examined the twisted tangle of metal and plastic that used to be his glasses, his long fingers probing the large bruise on the right side of his face. The cracked pieces of clear polymer reflected the massive blue and purple blotch on the high arch of his cheekbone, and the goose egg jutting out from above his brow. Not only was he late on his first day, but he'd run headlong into the door of his assigned classroom. The place sounding like angry cicadas, as seventy-five freshmen snapped his picture with their cell phones.

Shaking his head, Tommy collected his roster, plus the heavy black ledger he used as a grade book, and ducked out into the hall. Lately, he'd been suffering from intense headaches, which he attributed to moving. Massaging the back of his head, which was pounding, he rummaged in his bag, and dug out the bottle of ibuprofen he carried in case of emergencies. Lacking water, he crunched the four oblong red pills into a bitter paste, and punched the round 'up' button for the elevator.

"You're not supposed to chew them."

Tommy did a double-take, and then choked as a pill shard slid down his windpipe. Dr. Jason Lee Scott fighting the urge to laugh as his former teammate turned several shades of red, coughing violently until the tiny invader cleared his windpipe.

"Thank you Captain Obvious," Shaking his head, the original red ranger dangled one of the two bottled waters he was carrying in front of Tommy, the latter grabbing the frosted plastic tube, and chugging the cold liquid. "You know, I could have used this five minutes ago."

"Tom, there's a water cooler in your classroom."

"What?" Sure enough, there was one perched ominously next to the white board he'd spent the last hour pacing in front of. Tired, sore, and embarrassed Tommy ducked into the nearby elevator as soon as the doors slid open. Jason elbowing in at the last minute, still laughing at his friend's perpetual absent mindedness.

"Dude, if you're this clueless now, God help us when you're sixty."

"Hey, I may be senile, but at least I'm not fluffy," said Tommy, poking at the soft chub lining the other man's neck. Jason was his best friend, a brother in arms, and someone he trusted implicitly. It was why he called him as soon as he crossed the state line. Tommy knew the renovation of his childhood home would put him through hell, literally, and he would need the support of his oldest and closest friends in order to see it through.

"Fluffy or not, I can still kick your ass."

"You want to make a bet?" A brief wrestling match broke out in the elevator. True, Jason was Tommy's equal when it came to martial arts, but this was simply fun. The two men grappled wildly, before Jason got the upper hand, and pulled Tommy into a headlock. The youngest of five older brothers, Tommy relied on boyhood skills, and impossible flexibility to twist out of the other man's grip. The two facing off against one other, before dissolving into laughter, Jason pulling the other man into tight a hug.

"Glad to see you, green."

"Same here red," said Tommy, retrieving his bag from where it had fallen. "I see you got my message."

"Yep, so you're here for good?"

"That's the plan. I called Adam right before I left Reefside, I'm guessing he told you where I'm living?"

"Yes, he did." Jason let his statement hang, unspoken disproval thickening the elevator's stale air. When he got the call from Adam, he was happy that his best friend was moving back to Tucson. It meant that they could hang out again, regularly, and not just when he was in California for a conference. Then, the former black ranger let it drop that Tommy was moving, along with his older sister Erica, back into their childhood home. At first he didn't believe it, but an e-mail from Tanya confirmed it was true.

Talk about a _bad _idea. It wasn't that he didn't want Tommy to have closure, hell it was part of the reason why he was there. His problem lay with the way the black Dino Ranger was going about it. In less than five months he'd quit his job, ended his more-friends-than-lovers relationship with Haley, dropped nearly forty pounds of muscle, and moved back into the house where his parents had killed one another. It was too much, too soon, too fast. The last time Tommy did something like this, he ended up married to Kat. As if sensing the other man's thoughts, the original green ranger elbowed him lightly in the ribs.

"Jase, I can tell what you're thinking just by the look on your face. Don't worry I know what I'm doing."

"The last time you said that, I watched two obviously mismatched people tie the knot it Maui."

"Well, _that_ was different, I'm not the same person, I've grown, and believe it or not I've been planning something like this for a long time." Jason shoved his hands in his pockets, and let out a slow breath. What was he trying to do here? Was he going to try to talk Tommy out of something he was hell-bent on doing, or was he going to go along with it, and maybe keep the other man from imploding along the way? _Well, telling him that he was an idiot sure as hell didn't work when he said he was marrying Kat._

"If that's the case, what made you take the plunge?"

"Mesogog, or rather, fighting Mesogog. Being back in action, I realized I've spent the last ten years in some kind of limbo. I don't know when it happened, but at some point I shut down."

"What do you mean?"

"I stopped living, after that last fight it was like I woke up, and saw what my life had become."

"Which was…?"

"Predictable, dull, boring, you name it. Jason, I used to race cars at over a hundred miles an hour, I've done things people couldn't even dream of doing, and yet I run around like I'm scared of my own shadow. I'm done. I'm tired of having this millstone hanging around my neck."

"Are you talking about what happened with your parents?"

"Yeah, I need to find peace with what happened to my family, and then…deal with something else." Jason knew he was now referring to his plan to square off with Kim. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the man was still in love with her, hell, she was main reason why he was divorced. Kat, for all her faults, was a patient woman, but hearing her husband scream out his ex-girlfriend's name mid-orgasm was too much. The accident simply gave her an out.

Stepping out of the elevator, they cut through the sunlit halls of the university, heading for the paleontology department. Jason had to agree, Tommy had definitely changed over the years, he was more outgoing, his natural charm an asset when building new relationships. Although, Jason knew that underneath his cool exterior, he was still quiet, introverted, and painfully shy. Three things that didn't seem to affect his ability to catch a woman's eye, judging by the reaction of several young co-eds they passed in the hall. Then again, what woman could resist a ruggedly handsome man?

Unlike Jason, who had lost his buff body years ago, Tommy was still in good shape. The sharp outline of his pecs showed through the thin material of his long-sleeved black tee, and he moved with the grace of a dancer despite having a ten-inch plate in his left leg - a permanent souvenir from the accident that ended his racing career. Jason was a second-year resident when it happened, and because he was a close friend of the family he was permitted to watch the delicate procedure.

It took a team of surgeons six hours to attach the narrow strip of steel to the fragments of Tommy's shattered femur. Seventeen screws held it in place, and because of the severity of the break it could never be removed. Since then, Jason had been his primary physician, making sure Tommy didn't do anything stupid that would twist the plate, and put stress on the weakened bone. Although, the fact that the other man was walking; was a miracle in and of itself.

In the crash, Tommy sustained a broken arm, leg, cracked his pelvis, and burns over 30% of his body. Not to mention a fractured skull, an eight-week coma, and complete paralysis from the waist down. Yet six months after the crash he regained 90% mobility in his arms and neck, and shocked everyone by moving his legs after specialists told him he'd spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Six months after that, he was walking unassisted, and two years later Tommy tested and achieved a sixth-degree black belt in Karate. The only hint that he was ever injured came in a barely-noticeable limp, and the inability to completely close his left hand.

Catching a glimpse of himself in the glass of a darkened office door, Jason frowned at the pudgy, bald man who frowned back. No wonder he wasn't getting the same flirtatious looks as Tall, Dark, and Navajo. Fumbling with his bag, Tommy unlocked the door to his own office, and held it open as Jason strolled past.

"Nice, you even have a window." True to form, the room was cluttered, various odds and ends poking out of overflowing boxes, and the large desk littered with paperwork. Two black file cabinets were crammed against the back wall, covered in green post-it notes with various reminders scrawled on them, but the walls themselves were covered in paleontology posters, pictures, and plaques that were all neatly arranged. Leave it to Tommy to decorate first, and organize last.

"Yeah, it's great, way better than my office at Reefside."

"I guess that's what thirty-thousand dollars a semester will get you." Joked Jason; carefully toeing a bulging box of fossil specimens taking up the middle of the floor.

"I am _not_ complaining," smirked Tommy, as he dumped himself into the overstuffed black chair; Jason seating himself in the smaller beige one, after wrestling it free from its prison of boxes in the corner.

"Back to what we were talking about-"

"I know, Jason, I know all the arguments you're going to make, but I need to see this through."

"I'm not going to try to talk you out of it." Tommy inclined his head, and gave him a knowing look. "Okay, I _was_ going to try and talk you out of it, but I'm not. So tell me, what's the plan?"

"Renovating my parent's house, and hopefully remembering what happened so that I can finally put it behind me."

"Haven't you done that already?"

"Not if the nightmares are any indication." For the last two decades, the only way Tommy and his sister could get a decent night's sleep was if Ambien was involved, and personally the black Dino Ranger was tired of drugging himself into oblivion.

"This could make everything worse, though."

"It could, you're right, but it's why I'm still in contact with my therapist back in California, and I have my parents on speed-dial." Tommy opted to leave out the fact that his adoptive mother had hit the roof when he told her his plan. The only way he was able to avoid a familial meltdown, was by agreeing to check in with her once a week to let her know how he was doing. The fact that Jason was in his office trying to talk him out of it, confirmed his suspicion that she'd given the original red ranger a call after he left. Sometimes, having people care about you could be a real pain in the ass.

"What about your sister?" Erica Oliver was a trusted friend and acolyte of the original teams, and the only other person besides Kim Hart who knew Tommy inside and out. If she was on board with this, Jason would drop it, but if she wasn't…

"She's moving down, her stuff arrived yesterday afternoon, and she'll be flying into Phoenix on Friday."

"Okay, sounds like you have everything under control, but I want in on this. I don't want you doing this by yourself."

"Trust me," said Tommy, a shadow of a memory passing over his face. "I have no intention of doing that. In fact, knowing that you guys were here was part of the reason why I finally went through with this. For what it's worth, when I was driving out here, I felt like I'd finally come home."

"How did you feel when you went to your house?" Letting out a slow breath, Tommy leaned back in his chair. He didn't exactly want to tell Jason about the fact that every door in the house had several heavy-duty dead bolts on both the inside and the outside, the same for the windows. At each end of the house, large metal chains attached to huge steel rings were embedded securely in the ground. None of these modifications were made by Manuel. Apparently his parents were paranoid, to the point of keeping very large guard dogs on both ends of their house, which had more in common with a fortress than a home.

"I'm not sure, let's just put it at 'interesting'. Right now I'd like to catch up with the guys. I was thinking we could get together sometime?"

"What about tonight? Billy's coming in from D.C., and is staying over with Zack and Tanya for two weeks before heading back to Aquitar. A couple of the guys and I were going to meet him at the airport."

"Sounds great, I'll be there." Leaning back, Jason noticed the small photo of their original team perched on the corner of the cluttered desk. The shy thirteen-year old looking back was a stranger compared to the confident young man thumbing through his day planner, and checking messages on his iPhone. Back then, Thomas Kenneth Oliver was an introverted loner. His long black hair, worn in deference to his Navajo heritage, made him the target of homophobic jocks. His private character, a side-effect of two years in foster care, became the source of more gossip than a Hollywood magazine. No matter how you looked at it, Tommy was a social outcast. Outside of family, he had no friends, and a growing list of enemies. Jason was sure Tommy would have gone to the dark side, if Kimberly hadn't befriended his sister Erica. Even Billy was left scratching his head over that one. While Kimberly was a complete girly-girl, loving all things pink _before_ becoming the first pink ranger, Erica was an absolute tomboy, and a Goth. When they first met her, she had a shaved head and a mean left-hook if the trashed putties were any indication. The last part was how she ended up hanging out with Kim. After pounding several putties into clay bits, Erica was devastated to discover that her last tube of black lipstick had been crushed in the fight.

Fortunately, Kim had a tube leftover from a costume party she'd gone to the previous week, and had offered it to the older girl without a second thought. That simple gesture had opened the door, and right on time since only a month later Erica discovered that her brother was the Green Ranger. Setting down his planner, Tommy looked over at Jason who was staring out the window, his dark eyes distant, and unfocused.

"You're thinking too hard." Jerking upright, the physician blinked owlishly at the other man. Jason finally noticing the severe bruising on Tommy's face, and the dark circles around his eyes.

"Too much fun last night," He asked, pointing to the purple and yellow bumps. "Or was your lecture _that_ bad?"

"Ha-ha, no, I walked into a door."

"You did _that_ walking?" Jason inclined his head, and gave Tommy a knowing look. "Dude, I work in the emergency room, you've got to do better than that."

"Okay, I was running, and smashed into the damned thing. It's not my fault the doors are made out of half-inch thick clear plexiglass."

"Excuses, excuses, hold still." Scooting his chair forward until they were face-to-face, Jason's expert fingers ghosted over Tommy's battered cheek. "Can you open and close your jaw comfortably?"

"Yeah," Tommy winced as the emergency room physician poked at the sizable knot sticking out from his forehead. "Just hurts." Fishing for the penlight he carried with him, Jason shone the tiny beam into the hazel pools, noting the reaction of the large pupils. Head trauma had robbed Tommy of his eyesight during the early weeks of his recovery, returning after corrective surgery, and leaving him with progressive vision loss. So far, his sight had remained "consistently bad", but it was the first thing Jason worried about whenever Tommy managed to crack his skull.

"You might want to consider having an X-Ray, just to be safe."

"Jason, I've been in contact sports since I was six. I know the symptoms of a concussion, believe me I've had plenty of them, and the only thing I've got right now is a raging headache and a pair of broken glasses."

"Better safe than sorry," Jason poked at the tangled mess of cracked metal and plastic. "By the way, have you talked to Kim?" Tommy fell silent, his mouth turning down at the corners as they touched on the other reason for his move

"Not really, no. The last time I saw her was when you guys came up to help out, after I broke my arm."

"Right, right, I forgot about that." While repairing a leak, Tommy had lost his footing, and fell headlong off the roof of his house. Thankfully, Ethan and Conner were pulling up when it happened, the blue Dino Ranger going for help, while Conner stayed behind, and performed basic first aid until the ambulance showed up. On top of cracking every rib on the right side of his body, he'd broken his left arm in two places courtesy of the wheelbarrow he'd landed on. On the upside, the injury gave him an excuse for being absent when he couldn't de-morph.

"I thought you had some sort of in-depth conversation?" Aisha had called him from Reefside Medical Center just hours after the accident, Jason arriving sometime after midnight with Kim, who had been tipped off by his sister Erica. Despite their falling-out, Kim was always there whenever Tommy was laid-up, and had done the bulk of the aftercare once he was released from the hospital. The same had been true, when he was recovering from the crash.

"I wish, I spent the entire time she was up there rambling like an idiot, no thanks my stupid arm." For some reason, whenever Tommy or Erica broke a bone, they got a high fever, and severe fatigue. Fortunately, it never lasted long, only for a couple of days, but in the meantime they were completely helpless. Secretly, Jason believed that the fevers were directly tied into their ability to quickly heal, Tommy out of his cast, and back on his feet in three weeks instead of six.

"Well, for what it's worth, she didn't mind listening." It was true, although a couple of times Jason had to bite his lip since Tommy had a habit of singing "I'm Too Sexy", whenever he was hopped up on pain meds, at the top of his lungs.

"Except I need to actually _talk_ to her, and not just when I'm in the ICU." Tommy pocketed his iPhone, and tossed his day planner onto his messy desk. "Honestly, I just wish I knew what I did that caused her to be like this." Jason squirmed uncomfortably in his chair; he knew the reason why Kim dumped Tommy, and so did Erica Oliver. It happened during their last get-together in Florida, right before the team switched from Zeo to Turbo.

Eager to introduce Kim to his newfound older brother, Tommy had driven cross-country with David, only to get in a fight with the latter roughly an hour after arriving in the rural town of Pirate's Cove. David wanted Tommy to move to the reservation when he turned eighteen, and undergo some kind of purification ritual. While typically gung-ho for anything Navajo, Tommy had resisted, and after a heated exchange took off in his black pickup truck. No one heard from him for almost two days, until he turned up out of the blue outside a run-down 7-11. Jason knew this because Tommy had called him to come get him, the former gold ranger remembering the sinking feeling he got when he picked up a disheveled Tommy from outside the gas station.

In hindsight, Tommy's two-day absence was a major red flag. The black Dino Ranger never went that long without touching base with someone, and the way he looked that night when he got into Jason's car haunted him. The skin around his neck, wrists, and ankles were badly bruised. His hazel eyes were horribly bloodshot, and as soon as the door closed he huddled against it in a ball. There was blood on his shirt, and he couldn't stop shaking. Jason had tried asking him what happened, since it was obvious that he'd been in a fight, but his questions were met with silence. Chalking it up to a bad run-in with the Machine Empire, Jason had let it go, and he'd regretted that decision for the past sixteen years.

When they finally pulled up to the brightly-lit house, Tommy jumped out of the car, and made a beeline for the nearest bathroom. Rocky had bought a keg, courtesy of his cousin Eduardo, and Billy managed to land a couple coolers of beer. After cleaning himself up, Tommy shocked everyone by getting completely wasted. Normally, he didn't drink more than a beer because of his low tolerance for alcohol, but that night Jason watched him drink an entire fifth of vodka like it was nothing. It was as if he couldn't drink enough, and eventually he stumbled upstairs to where Kim and David were talking in one of the bedrooms.

Jason didn't know what happened next, except that it was sometime around midnight, and everyone was pretty drunk. He'd gone upstairs to get some towels after Adam threw up on himself, when a loud commotion broke out down the hall. Racing into the bedroom he found David trying to pry Tommy's hands from around his girlfriend's neck. The latter was screaming into Kim's face, raving about how she deserved to die, choking the life out of her, and then Erica was in the room shouting something in Navajo. After that, his memory cut off, save waking up two days later to David, Erica, and Kim hovering over him in the hospital where he was being treated for a severe wound on his left arm. Within hours, a plan was made, and Jason helped Kim write that damned letter.

Twelve years later, Erica and Jason agreed it was a bad plan. Despite having absolutely no recollection of that night, Florida haunted Tommy. There was a hole in his memory, a big one, and it had swallowed the entire sixteenth year of his life. Jason had been around Tommy in the days following that horrible evening, the other teen a psychological wreck, and then one day he was fine. Laughing, joking about how he must have hit his head after taking off to cool down after the fight with his brother. Then, even that was gone, and Jason had watched as Tommy retreated further and further into himself until he finally shut down. Disappearing until the rise of Mesogog stirred up his former self, and now he was in Tucson trying to reclaim what was lost.

In hindsight, it was obvious that on the night of the assault, Tommy was under alien control. On top of wearing the most colors, Tommy also held the record for the most kidnappings, tortures, and incidents of attempted brainwashing than any other ranger. However, without Zordon, there was no way of knowing which villain was responsible, and whoever it was they succeeded in turning two teenagers into very unhappy adults. Jason wasn't about to let the trend continue.

"Are you sure you want that answer?" Tommy looked up at Jason, realizing that the other man knew more than he was saying. Yet when it came to Kim, someone Jason had known since preschool, along with Billy, the likelihood of him opening his mouth was slim to none. It made him nervous, edgy, but he tried not to let it show.

"I don't have another choice, now do I? Ignorance certainly isn't helping my ability to sleep at night, is it?"

"Then, I guess you need to talk to Kim."

"How is she?" Tommy shifted his gaze so that he was staring out the window, his long fingers turning a spherical stone paperweight over and over in his palm.

"She's good, we hang out a lot."

"Are you seeing her?" Jason could tell by the tone in the other man's voice, that he knew about his attempt to rekindle their relationship. Shaking his head, he fiddled with the toy T-Rex perched on the edge of Tommy's desk.

"No."

"Does she ever talk about me?"

"Dude, she's best friends with your older sister." For some reason, Tommy kept forgetting that, but it was true. Erica was how Kim knew everything there was to know about him, the two e-mailing, texting, and visiting regularly whenever Erica passed through Arizona while touring with her band. It was an odd dynamic, to say the least.

"Well, that answers that. Did she say if she would be interested in…seeing me?" Jason studied the other man's face, noting the unnaturally placid tone of his voice, and neutralization of his chiseled features. He wasn't surprised that Tommy didn't remember what happened, as long as he'd known him his greatest fear was turning into his father, and so it was only natural that he would repress the memory. Jason knew this was possible, because it had happened before, after a terrible incident orchestrated by Lord Zedd.

"Yes she did, in fact I have something for you." Fishing around in the pocket of his black blazer, Jason pulled out a carefully folded piece of pink paper. Tommy didn't say anything, his face unreadable as he picked up the stiff square from where Jason had set it in the little Zen sand garden Aisha had given him for his birthday. Unfolding it, he saw her e-mail addressed and phone numbers written out in her neat handwriting. Tucking it into his pocket, he glanced over at his clock; it was a quarter to four.

"Damn, I have a meeting. Look, how about I text you after work, and we can meet up here with the guys before picking Billy up at the airport?"

"Sounds great, Zack's working a case, but he should be there. Good luck with your meeting."

"Thanks." Jason showed himself out, while Tommy dashed for the stairs. Feeling at peace, for the first time in almost a decade, the paleontologist breezed through the rest of his day. In a matter of hours, he'd signed the last of his HR paperwork, and secured the dates for several upcoming orientations. After a crash overview of the courses he was responsible for teaching, taking over for three very-relieved adjunct-faulty, Tommy escaped onto the grounds for a mental break.

It was nearly the end of his shift, and Jason had texted to let him know that he and the guys were on their way. Strolling through the lush grounds, he was awed by the university's fusion of classic Sonoran architecture, and modern design. The buildings were dark, modular, reminiscent of the massive mesas in the desert, and a rich adobe in color. Their minimalist facade broken by high glass windows that let in the bright Arizona sunlight. The earth was green, thanks to the sprinkler system, while the massive mimosas and Palo Verdes cast gentle shadows across the campus sprawl.

Wandering about, he mentally reviewed his conversation with Jason, and thought about what the other man _hadn't_ said. Tommy could read Jason as well as Jason could read him, if not better, and he knew that there was something he wasn't telling him. His only clue came from the night of the bonfire, when Zack cut off his hair. Billy, who was three-fourths Coors and Michelob at the time, told him that Kim never met another guy, and made the whole thing up. It sounded preposterous, Kim had never lied to him, but booze acted like truth serum on Billy's system, which was why he knew the original blue ranger used to have a crush on Rocky DeSantos.

_Now there's a thought_, mused Tommy looking up at the waving branches of a nearby mimosa. He had to admit, none of it made sense, and what was even worse was the fact that the majority of his memories about that year were gone. Save significant events - like the letter, the rest was a blank. Whenever he asked about it, the others deflected him, Tommy halfway through a conversation on a different subject before he realized that they never answered his question. It was as if they were trying to protect him from something, but what?

The thought made him shudder, the former ranger feeling cold and alone, as he realized he was in an unfamiliar area of the campus. The sense of vulnerability made him slightly paranoid, retracing his steps he was halfway to the quad on the north side of campus, when a man wearing a ski mask and dressed in black, stepped in front of him.

"What the hell?" Two more men dressed like the first popped up behind him, while two more appeared with one on either side. The five strangers had him surrounded, the black ski mask brigade tightening their formation around the former ranger, watching his every move. Licking his lips, he sized up his opponents. They looked human, for the most part; their bodies tense as they prepared the coming fight. They both knew he wouldn't do whatever it was they wanted him to do, that he would fight, and with the intent to kill if necessary. Assuming a fighting stance, he focused on the one he sensed was their leader.

"Sorry, but I'm not in the mood for a mugging."

"You will come with us." The voice was painfully flat, strained, as if the owner was trying to disguise it. _Great, just great, my first day at work, and I get the urban ninja goon squad._

"I don't do kidnapping either. As I see it you have two choices. You can rush me, and make the next five minutes very, very painful, or you can walk away." The masked leader considered his words for a second, and then nodded at his henchmen.

"Take him." Lunging to the side, Tommy caught one of the men off guard. Jamming his elbow into the man's side, he shoved him into the two racing towards him, and took down another with a back-kick to the groin. Howling in agony, the man went down, his hands clenched between his thighs as he rolled around in the grass. Snickering, Tommy easily disarmed the one swinging at him with a baton, catching the arm aimed for his throat, and twisting it sharply. The dull snap was punctuated by a howl of pain, the former ranger dropping the man like a hot sack. Two were down, two more raced towards him, only to have one drop after a painful chop to the throat, and the other flee for the hills. Only their leader remained, the man circling Tommy like a black snake.

"Seriously, didn't you see what I did to your goons?"

"I did, but they've never been able to take you."

"Huh?" Dodging a blow, Tommy grappled with the other man. This time, he had to work for it, thankful that he had kept his skills up over the years, but as the fight raged on it was clear that he and the other man were evenly matched. The realization left a cold ball of fear in the pit of his stomach, as he struggled to counter his attacker's moves. It was as if the other man had spent years living in his head, intimately aware of his unique style, and thus able to anticipate when he changed tactics. Snapping a kick at the masked man's midsection, he was horrified when the latter caught his leg, his bad one, and twisted it painfully to the side. Screaming, Tommy felt his body bounce from the force of hitting the concrete path. The wind knocked out of him, he struggled to stand only to feel a slice of red-hot pain between his shoulder blades.

_Did they shoot me? _Rolling he tried to get up, only to find that his arms were numb, and his legs useless. Pounding footsteps gave way to the others, their rough hands hauling him up from the ground, and over to a parked van where he was half-carried half-shoved into the back. Realizing that he was about to be taken, Tommy fought through the haze clouding his senses, and struggled against their iron grip.

"Hold him!" Adrenaline canceled out the effects of whatever had been used to stun him, and a powerful kick sent one of his abductors tumbling out of the van.

"Get the fuck off me!" The remaining men held Tommy down, the doors to the van banging shut as the vehicle started, and pulled away from the lot. All too familiar with the level of danger he was in, Tommy jerked an arm free, desperately clawing at one of the masked faces, but he was on his back, and in no time they had him subdued. A blow to his left kidney took some of the fight out of him, enough to roll him on his stomach, and pin his arms across his back. Struggling, his body twisted under their vice-like hands as the cool bite of rubbing alcohol grazed his lower back. From the corner of his eye, the tell-tale ejaculation of a syringe arced in the flashing sunlight that illuminated the van.

"NO!" Cruel fingers curled into his hair, forcing his head down, while heavy knees crushed against his back, and held him firmly against the coarse carpet. Underneath, he could hear the roar of the highway, feel the vehicle lurching as it took him away, and he cried out as the needle pierced the muscle of his lower back. Swearing, he felt the cold pressure of the liquid expanding in the tissue, before the needle was withdrawn, and then inserted on the opposite side. Terrified, Tommy felt his body shake as whatever they'd given him started to kick in. Satisfied that he was no longer a threat, his captors rolled him onto his back, and secured him to a waiting stretcher while stripping his pliant body.

Naked and helpless, he lay on the padded board panting as he fought to stay awake. Whatever was in that needle, worked fast, and Tommy could feel the drug pulling him under. If he wanted to make it out of there alive, he needed to stay awake, but already the world was turning gray. His last clear memory was that of a thick blanket being drawn over him, and someone pushing their hand through his hair. He supposed it was meant to comfort him, in some twisted way, but all it did was make his skin crawl with revulsion. Looking up, he could see the wide brown eyes of the man responsible, watching him intently as he slipped away.

"Don't worry," he said as the darkness engulfed Tommy. "It'll all be over soon."


	4. Chapter 4

Title: In The Path of The Skin-Walker

Author: RedMyst

Rating: M

Spoilers: MMPR and MMPR: DT

Summary: After accepting a position at a prestigious university, Dr. Thomas Oliver finds himself unraveling a secret about his family's history involving the supernatural, and the Navajo nation.

Disclaimer: I don't own them.

Author's Note: All I'm going to say is that my Beta and I have some very, very bad things planned for Tommy Oliver. Don't worry, he'll be okay, eventually :-)

_August 23rd, 2011_

_In the darkness of an abandoned warehouse, six shadowy figures stood gathered around the edges of a red circle. Their figures, grayish in the blue twilight of early evening, were thin, wiry, and nude. The only source of light, besides the high narrow windows lining the empty building, was a small white candle burning in the center of the ring. Its feeble yellow glow illuminated the six pairs of red eyes that shifted from one to the other, the air tense as they waited for their seventh. These meetings were rare, impossible outside of Tucson, for the way of the Skinwalker was a solitary one, and in ancient times rival Witches were killed._

_Yet, with the arrival of the Belegana – the white man – the Navajo had changed, hell, the entire world had changed, and they along with it. Realizing that their only chance of survival lay in an alliance, they formed the Inner Circle, and divided Arizona into seven districts. One Witch governed each region, and ensured the perpetuation of their shared goal – The Plan. For this, they met once a month, but tonight an emergency summons had bought them to the warehouse. Something was threatening the work, and at the worst time since The Plan was almost complete. In less than a month they could make their final move, especially since there were no active Ranger teams, or meddling Watchers from the Council of Light to challenge them; a perfect opportunity. Yet, a threat had made itself known, one that warranted a gathering._

_Turning, they watched as a slim figure approached the circle, dirty blonde tresses concealing all but one red eye that seemed to smile as its owner took her place at the edge of the ring. Bowing, she allowed a moment of silence, before nodding at the tall man who stared at her with disproval. _

"_I hope that you have a good reason for calling us together, Seven." No names were used here, to do so would give a rival Witch the power to destroy a member of the Inner Ring. So, they used the name of their respective district to address one another it was simpler and safer after what happened to Eight._

"_I do," she replied. "The work is in jeopardy; our worst fear has been realized."_

"_We've been discovered by the Council?" The nervous, high voice of Two matched the red eyes darting from shadow to shadow. The humans, after the mayhem of Lord Zedd, had signed a treaty with the Council of Light. The first blackwater world to do so in more than a thousand years, and a minor concern unless a Watcher was afoot, or a Guardian like Zordon. Fortunately, for the Inner Circle at least, no one had seen the other Guardian of Earth for five-thousand years, and most thought her dead. Or rather, they hoped she was. _

"_Worse, the fair-haired son and daughter of Eight have returned to Tucson." A low rumble of anger, shock, and fear coursed through the still night air. "Even now, they gather with the others who once served the Council."_

"_Damnit! Even from the grave, that Shaa'drick bitch taunts us." Five's eyes flared in the near-darkness, the candle flickering nervously before him. "No matter, we eliminated one, and we have a hand on the other."_

"_Yes, if they draw to close to our activities, we can use the remaining son to destroy the others, and perhaps bring him into the circle. Restoring the balance that was lost when Eight was killed."_

"_Eight was never truly one of us," Six's voice was soft, effete, and packed with arrogant pride. "Remember, until I stepped in, he was ready to give us all up."_

"_If you hadn't stepped in, perhaps we could have been rid of all of them." Replied Seven, staring icily at Six. "Your only redeeming value is your role in giving us access to the boy."_

"_About that," said Five. "Do we know whether or not our hand is still in play?"_

"_It is not, but that can be changed."_

"_Only, if you get to him first Two. We must assume our enemies know the children are here, and are mobilizing to strike back against us," Purred One, the voice androgynous, much like the owner, which baffled and terrified the other six. Anonymity aside, it was still nice to know the sex of the person you were dealing with, and of all of them One was the most dangerous – after Seven._

"_All in good time, for now we must decide what we will do to safeguard The Plan."_

"_We can't act, if we take him now, it will bring attention to us."_

"_Agreed, however we can't just sit back at wait."_

"_That," said Seven. "Is exactly what we are going to do, until the opportunity to play our hand presents itself; and we not only bring the boy into our fold, but eliminate the Council's servants as well."_

"_What of the others?"_

"_They will fall, just as they fell twenty-six years ago." Seven picked up the candle, and snuffed it. "And then we will have our revenge."_


	5. Chapter 5

Title: In The Path of The Skin-Walker

Author: RedMyst

Rating: M

Spoilers: MMPR and MMPR:DT

Disclaimer: I don't own them.

Author's Note: Erica-Marie Oliver is one of my favorite characters to write. When my Beta and I first started creating her, we decided we wanted her to be edgy, mysterious, and packing some attitude. We both like using real-life actors and actresses whom, if this were an episode, we feel could play the part, and for Erica we went with Jennifer Blanc Biehn. I've gotten a lot of feedback about her [Erica] from the last incarnation of this story before The Disaster, and so we kept a lot of the original version of her for this one as well. We're not yet ready to say why she conspired with David, Kim, and Jason to keep her brother in the dark about Florida, but we _will_ tell you that the most powerful ally Tommy or any of the other rangers could possibly have, is her. How? You'll just have to wait and see :-)

_August 24th, 2011_

_It was always the same._

_Erica Oliver stood at the base of a long stairway leading to the second floor of a strange house, not the one from her childhood, but another – the one from that terrible night in Florida. All around her stood the others, frozen, as though caught in that final moment like flies in amber. She could see Adam, half-risen on one elbow from where he'd been lying on the couch, drunk, and half-conscious. His wide brown eyes fixed on something at the top of the stairs, his forehead creased with lines of confusion and fear. Behind her, Rocky hovered in mid-air over the chair he'd been sitting in, his beer hanging in front of his open hand from where he'd thrown it in his surprise. To her left Tanya and Aisha stood transfixed, their mouths open in horror, and their arms stretched out to point at the terrible something as they fled for…for what?_

_Billy._

_The original blue ranger was outside on the deck taking a piss when everything happened. Looking over her shoulder, she could see him through the smooth panes of the sliding glass doors, his head half-cocked to the side as the commotion reached his sensitive ears. Turning back to the stairs, she saw Kat pressed against the wall, staring upwards, blood on her face, her hands clawing at the carpeted stairs as she tried to scramble to safety. They were all caught, as she was, in that final moment, before everything went to shit – except she wasn't._

"_Erica." Looking up she saw her brother standing at the top of the stairs, although, instead of a teenager, he was a little boy. Slowly, she climbed the narrow flight, noting the eerie blue glow that surrounded them, and the subsonic "thrum" that vibrated the banister. It reminded her of the footsteps of the Mega, no, Dragonzord, when it rose from its oceanic lair. The closer she got to him, the hotter the air became, until it was so stifling and still that she could barely breathe. Up, up, up she went, the stairs seeming to stretch on forever until she was crawling on her hands and knees. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she was face-to-face with her younger sibling._

_Kneeling down, she could see that he was crying tears of blood, his body shaking as he looked down at the terrific scene below. Smiling, despite the dread welling up inside of her, she wiped away the red streaks with her thumbs. Her long arms shrugging out of her black leather jacket, which she wrapped around him protectively._

"_I didn't mean to," he said softly. "It made me hurt them."More tears slid down his face, his small body jerking free from her grip as he backed away, his small hands shoving her towards the stairs. _

"_You need to go, before it comes back."_

"_Before who comes back, what are you talking about?" Erica grabbed Tommy by the arm the air tense; and the thrum turning into a roar as she pulled him towards her. "Tell me, what is going on. Tell me so I can help you." Her brother turned back towards her his once-bright green eyes were completely black, and his mouth full of white needles._

"_Beware the eaters of rot, who prey on the still-new flesh, and come bearing the gifts of blood." And then he was gone, the darkness transforming into blackened hands that snaked out, and snatched him away from her. Screaming, she grabbed for him, but it was too late. The dark figure carrying him away into the recesses of the house, which twisted, and began to collapse –_

"Ma'am, are you all right?" Erica came to with a start, one of the flight attendants; a graying fortyish woman with a round figure was shaking her awake, concern written across her heavily-powdered face.

"Yeah, I guess I was having a bad dream."

"That's okay we'll be landing in forty-five minutes. Would you like me to get you something?"

"Yeah, water with ice, if it's no trouble."

"Sure, I'll be right back." Letting out a slow breath, Erica looked out the window at the massive sea of clouds stretching out under the wing. In forty-five minutes, she would be landing at the Tucson International Airport. Originally, she was supposed to fly into Phoenix on Friday, but the idea of leaving her brother alone in that house for another three days troubled her. So last night, she dropped some valium in her dog Rambo's bowl, and booked an earlier flight out to Arizona. Technically, the prescription was for her, but the last thing she wanted was the smell of dog crap fogging up the windows of Aisha's car. Looking up, she thanked the flight attendant, and sipped at the small cup while staring at her reflection in the window.

Erica-Marie Oliver, like her brother, was tall, slim, with a naturally raspy voice, and long black hair dyed platinum blonde. Her skin was pale, save a light tan dusting her cheeks, and she possessed a sleek face that reminded everyone of an owl. At thirty-three, she looked no older than twenty, her build wiry, and deceptively strong. Like Tommy, she had a background in martial arts, possessing a second-degree black belt in Muay Thai, and a sixth-degree in Karate. She was his equal, and still capable of bitch-slapping him into the wall if he got on her nerves. Erica smiled as she remembered some of their more interesting fights, especially the one where she dumped water on his Nintendo after he refused to move his butt out of her favorite chair, and he cut the strings off her guitar in retaliation. They fought like cats and dogs, they loved each other, and Erica was still as fiercely protective of him now as she was then.

"Here we go." The plane banked to the right, the PA system chiming as the captain came in over the com, and announced they would be arriving in less than fifteen minutes. Fastening her seatbelt, Erica passed the cup back to one of the flight attendants who was pushing a small cart down the aisle; collecting everyone's trash before they landed. Looking over her shoulder, she noticed a young girl, about thirteen or fourteen, with hot pink hair doing a terrible job of spying on her from behind her iPod. Smirking, she snaked out her hand, and grabbed the device from the girl. Ignoring the loud protests, she pulled up the screen, and smiled as her face appeared under the name of her band – The Joy Society. The girl's mother loomed over her, along with her daughter who gaped at her with round green eyes.

"That iPod cost me two-hundred dollars." Erica just shrugged, thumbing through the playlist. Apparently, the girl was a huge fan, having downloaded some of her earlier releases including the one from her old group, Blue Girl.

"Wow, you have my first album," the girl went pale, Erica ignoring her steady stream of 'oh my god, oh my god, oh my god', and fishing a silver sharpie pen out of the breast pocket of her black leather jacket. With a flourish, she autographed the back of the iPod. "You want to be like me?" The girl nodded, while her mother adopted a severe frown. "Then take my advice - practice whatever it is you're good at, every day for an hour, keep off the drugs, keep from under the boys, keep your friends – your _real_ friends close, and hold on to your family." She tossed the device back to the girl. "Also, listen to your Mom, and get a degree in something that can feed you. I have one in psychology; it's kept a roof over my head when I couldn't book a gig to save my life." This time, it was the mother who beamed, nodding a silent 'thank you', before she and her daughter returned to their seats.

Scrunching down, Erica closed her eyes as the airplane began to descend, the change in altitude and pressure made her feel nauseated, and she wished she hadn't left the Dramamine in her carry-on. The narrow black suitcase neatly trapped behind ten tons of luggage in the overhead bin. Breathing, she let herself move with the aircraft, feeling slightly euphoric as she let the world pass away until the bright cabin lights bought her around, and a portly man was standing over her clutching her suitcase.

"Miss, is this yours?"

"Yeah, thanks." Unbuckling her seatbelt, she pulled up the handle, and tugged it behind her as she followed the other passengers out of the terminal. Multi-platinum selling artist, lead vocalist of the hottest alternative band in the country, and still willing to schlep around her own luggage and equipment instead of having a bunch of yes-men do it. The practice kept her humble, grounded, reminded her of where she came from, and it kept her sane in an industry where an artist needed to be legally and financially savvy to protect both their work and their pocketbook. That last part she entrusted to Eugene Skullovitch, her manager, and little brother's business partner in the fast-growing Bulkmeir's. Shaking her head, she laughed to herself. _I'm glad I was right that I wasn't crazy when I had the idea that the same two kids who used to make asses of themselves chasing after my brother and his friends, were shrewd businessmen._ Despite a background as a five-star chef, Tommy had been completely closed to the idea of partnering with Bulk on a business venture, but she'd talked him into it – gradually. Pointing out how Skull had helped her successfully turn her career around after her partner Amy Larson cut a new contract, that didn't include her, and stipulated that she couldn't receive any royalties for two years.

Overnight, she lost everything, and she almost left the industry until Skull offered to manage her. The hyper punk reminding her that he used to take care of her business when they were in high school, and together they hunted down her old band mates - the ones who were with her when she first started out. They took off after she hooked up with Larson, Erica readily admitting to them that she made a dumb choice, she picked Amy over them, and after some serious begging and apologizing they came back. The Joy Society was formed in the basement of her parent's house, and was now the top alternative rock band in the country. Tommy had agreed to the deal, and now he the largest shareholder in what looked to become a new restaurant chain.

Walking through the airport, she turned on her cell phone. She had texted Aisha before she left letting her know her change of plans, and asked if she could meet her at the airport when she got in. Aisha had agreed, and now she was checking to see where the former yellow ranger was waiting. About that last part, yes, she knew the identity of each and every ranger from Morphin' through Turbo, and had even worn the mystical spandex. Observed only one other time with Andros and his sister, Tommy and Erica had the unique ability to exchange The Power. She had worn every one of his colors, and had the distinct honor of besting some of their enemies while having no power of her own. The time she sent Goldar packing, chasing the gold warrior with his own sword, was still a hot subject in the ranger community.

Sighing, she looked up as a crowd of cameras rose to greet her in the public lobby. It wasn't too bad, just about two dozen, but she wasn't worried. A few years ago she and Aisha had cut a deal of sorts through a video on YouTube. If the photographers kept their distance, were respectful, and didn't invade their personal space they would give them the best shots possible when out in public. This included semi-private events, but if they even so much as thought they saw a camera flash security would be all over them. So far, the truce was working, Erica eventually modifying it by stating that they could ask her questions as she went about her business, but she would only answer the most interesting one. Repeats would automatically be ignored. Flashing them her best smile, she strolled confidently through the fray. As usual, she'd made sure to make a perfect fashion statement. Erica had stepped off the plane in her favorite black leather jacket with silver studs, matching jeans, and red Doc Marten boots. Her hair, recently bleached, was almost white, which matched her tank top, and on her left hand she wore a ring sporting an enormous lab emerald (she would never buy a real one that size). Questions floated in the air around her, and she shot out a general answer –

"Yes, I'm still single, yes this move is permanent, no, I don't give a shit about Amy Larson, and yes it is Hip-Hop sensation Aisha picking me up. Are we good?" Erica paused to rescue Rambo from the baggage claim, and plop the black and brown sheepdog mutt onto her cart with her luggage. Bending down, she peered into his kennel. _No poop, no pee, and still asleep._ Standing up, she made for the exit to see if Aisha was waiting outside in her yellow Porsche, when a young reporter got in her way.

"Hey, you're in my personal space!"

"Sorry, I just wanted to know if it was true that your brother, former Nascar driver Tommy Oliver, was taken to the emergency room of Tucson Medical Center earlier tonight?" Erica felt the air freeze, a flash of gold made her look up to see Aisha standing inside the door, and she just knew by the look on her face something terrible had happened.

"I don't know, this my first time hearing this. You said he was taken there earlier tonight, did your bosses tell you his condition?" The kid shook his head, and Erica felt her stomach drop. Pushing him aside, she followed Aisha outside where Adam's green 2000 Nissan Pathfinder sat waiting. Grabbing her bags, he shoved them into the back, wrestling Rambo and his kennel into a narrow gap. Climbing into the vehicle, Erica buckled her seatbelt, Aisha hopping into the back where she started texting furiously, and Adam taking the wheel. Holding onto the handhold bolted to the frame above her door, Erica hung on as they broke several speed limits while racing to the hospital.

"Why is Tommy in the emergency room, what happened to him?" Looking over at Adam, she noticed in the flickering light of streetlamps and passing cars that he was covered in sweat, and shaking to the point that his hands were barely steady on the wheel. Turning, she shook her head questioningly at Aisha whose gaze dropped to the floor. "I'll repeat myself," she said, returning her attention to Adam. "What happened to my brother?"

"Do you remember that night in Florida?"


	6. Chapter 6

Title: In The Path of The Skin-Walker

Author: RedMyst

Rating: M

Spoilers: MMPR and MMPR:DT

Summary: After accepting a position at a prestigious university, Dr. Thomas Oliver finds himself unraveling a dark secret about his family's history involving the supernatural, and the Navajo nation.

Disclaimer: I don't own them.

Author's Note: We're going to take a bit of a breather for the next few chapters after this one, but to confirm a question from a reader – yes, Erica and the other rangers know what happened in Florida, and yes they are keeping it from Tommy. Why? You'll just have to keep reading, and find out.

_August 24__th__, 2011_

_Everything was color, sound, and darkness. _

_Tommy slowly cracked his aching eyelids, his body protesting loudly as he rolled himself onto his back, and forced himself to focus. He was lying on a beach, half-covered in sand, the ocean crashed rhythmically against the shore, and he could feel the coolness of night on his bare skin. Groaning, he curled into a ball. His head felt like it was full of cotton, so did his mouth, and his throat was rough with thirst._

"_Where am I?" The last thing he remembered was being dragged into the back of that damn van, the ninja goon squad shooting him up with some kind of sedative, and then nothing. Now, he was lying on a beach, in the middle of nowhere, sick, sore, and in a seriously bad mood. If he was right, and he usually was, that they had drugged, robbed, and then dumped him somewhere near the Californian or Mexican coastline he was going to hunt them down like dogs. First, however, he needed to get up, get off the beach, and get some help._

"_Come on Oliver, you've been through worse." Through sheer will, he managed to push himself up onto all fours, and for the first time he got a good look at his surroundings. "On second thought…" He was still on Earth, that much was obvious, but the sky was a mess of thundering black clouds, and flashes of white-hot lightning. There was a slight wind blowing, one with a sharp chill, and as he looked about he realized that everything – from the smallest blade of grass to the largest red mangrove – was in a state of decay. Wait, red mangroves? Tommy stared up at the small grove towering over him. _

"_Those only grow in Florida." Which meant he was on the East Coast, but how did he get there, and why did everything look like it had a bad case of blight? There was no way his abductors had drive him that far, unless… Tommy looked down at himself. He was dressed in black cargoes, with a matching jacket, and a white shirt underneath. The clothes he was wearing were long gone, and as he scrambled to his feet he realized that he was alive, but definitely unconscious. How did he know? Because he'd never been to Florida, except once at Daytona, and he hadn't taken the time to observe the scenery. _

"_Yet, how come I knew what a red mangrove was?" Tommy scratching his head, as he made his way up the gray beach. "Sure, there were the postcards Kim sent me when she was down there training for the Pan-Globals, but those always had palm trees on them, or…kittens." Unnerved that he was having what appeared to be a lucid dream, while God-knew-what was being done to him in the real world, he decided to go with it, until something changed. Maybe he would come out of it, and in time to break a few heads. Looking about, he noticed a narrow trail leading up into the woods, and he followed it into the dense foliage. Everywhere he turned, there was rot, the sky menacing, and the air cold as he pushed into the darkness. Despite the fact that he'd never been to this mysterious place, everything was familiar to him, from the mangroves, to the grasses that sprang up on either side of the hard-packed earth. It was eerie, leaving him nervous and unsettled, but he kept going until a sound to his right made him stop._

"_I really, really hope I don't have to kick my own ass again." His hazel eyes scanned the trees for any sign of his former ranger incarnations, but none were forthcoming. Looking about the decaying gray forest, he decided to keep going, on the off chance that if he wasn't having a hallucination, then maybe he would run into someone who knew what the hell was going on. Pressing on, he'd just made his way around a sharp curve, when a sound akin to a tuning fork made him pause. If it was someone was screwing with him, striking the tool on a small stone, he would be able to pinpoint them. This, however, was omniscient. Frowning, he stared up at the churning sky, finding it empty save thunder, and rolling black clouds. Experience taught him to keep quiet, keep his position as secret as possible, and try to maintain a perimeter so he could either see or hear a pursuer. With the hard-packed earth, it would be easy to detect footsteps, and even a practiced ninja couldn't make it through the dense underbrush without making a ton of noise._

_Reasonably assured that he could defend himself, he continued on. Trying his best to ignore the tone that seemed to be rising in pitch and volume, Tommy remembered from his days as a ranger that certain alien aircraft used multi-phase harmonics as part of their propulsion systems, or for the treatment of certain medical conditions such as cancer, infection, or parasites. The terrible sound pounding against his eardrums, reminded him of the latter. Ducking under some low-hanging branches, he was halfway down a steep hill when a sharp pain cut through the back of his skull. It was unlike anything he'd ever felt before, and something he never wanted to feel again. Falling to his knees, he grabbed the back of his head. The sound was screaming now, filling him, rising in tandem with the awful pain._

"_Oh my God, they're killing me!" In agony, he crawled off the trail, and into the hollow of a grassy bank. Curling into a fetal position, he pressed his hands against the back of his head. Not even when he broke his arm when he was twelve, not even when he was on fire for that horrible moment in the crash, did he feel pain on this level. It was as if his brain was tearing itself in half, the sensation red-hot, searing, and ripping cries from him that no alien overlord ever could. On and on it went, Tommy begging, crying, and praying for whatever it was to stop. If they were killing him, he wanted it to be over, now, so he could just die, and not feel that horrible pain –_

"_Shit!" lurching forward, the former ranger emptied himself onto the ground. It was as if every foul, vile, disgusting thing that had ever called his body 'home' was being drawn out through his mouth. Chancing a look, he saw a pool of black sludge flowing down under the bushes, the sight sickening him even more, and he continued retching until there was nothing left. Collapsing, he lay on the ground in a fog. Somewhere, he registered that the pain had stopped, the cottony feeling in his head disappearing, and a strange 'lightness' spreading through his body. Silence, sweet beautiful silence coaxing him around, Tommy opened his eyes in time to see a long blade of grass turn a brilliant green. The blight was vanishing, in tandem with the oppressive, sickly atmosphere. Overhead, he could see the storm fading, the clouds losing their hideous blue-gray color, and disappearing to reveal a spectacular moon._

_Lying in the grass, bathed in moonlight, Tommy could feel the life returning to him. On the off chance he wasn't dead, and this wasn't the netherworld; he hoped that whatever that was, it was over. Drawing in several cleansing breaths he paused, realizing he could actually smell the perfume of the mangroves, and hear the stirrings of life in the underbrush. Opening his eyes, he was awestruck by the breathtaking beauty of the Florida night. Brilliant white stars twinkled on a black backdrop, while an enormous yellow moon hung directly overhead. Tommy able to see the three large patches that when he was younger, reminded him of a bowling ball. A slow smile spreading over his face, as he remembered Kim correcting him that no, it wasn't a bowling ball, it was –_

"…_the man in the Moon." Every tree branch, leaf, and blade of grass stood out in crystal clarity. The air was warm, sweet, and it filled him with energy as he drew in the aromatic balm. Feeling renewed, he pushed himself upright, and looked around. In the humidity the hard-packed trail was soft, and rank with the smell of living earth. Feeling a sense of calm and self-assuredness he never thought possible, Tommy slowly got to his feet. It was like being reborn, the pain instantly forgotten as he continued down the path as if in a daze. His mind barely registering the appearance of the beach house tucked back a ways from a hidden cove, or the sounds of drinking and laughter as he walked dumbly through the trees. It was only when he found himself standing in front of his old 1998 Ford Ranger, that he snapped into reality._

"_I know this place." The fleeting thought screamed of a reality that made a cold pit of fear form in the bottom of his stomach – a forgotten memory. Looking around, Tommy watched as the darkness coalesced around the small bungalow, and the sound cut out. The lights popped, making him jump as the air went cold, and a light wind began blowing. Over his shoulder he could see a storm front moving in fast over the ocean, the cove providing him an unobstructed view of the graying seas. Weaving between the cars, he correctly identified the personal vehicles of his old teammates. _

"_Rocky, Aisha, Adam, Kat, Billy, Jason, Zack, Tanya, Erica, Trini, mine, and…" Tommy stopped in front of the hot pink 1989 VW Beetle. "Kim."_

_Turning, he looked up at the wide porch. The wind was stronger now, the strange night bordering on bizarre as he climbed the steps, and tried the doorknob. Before he could even close his hand, it swung open, revealing a darkened interior lit only by moonlight. Instantly, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, his sixth sense picking up on some hidden horror that made him pause. Yet, something urged him on, and he stepped inside. Immediately, the door banged shut behind him. Having been through this one too many times with Rita and Zedd, plus the overall weirdness of this entire experience, Tommy didn't even bother to turn around, and try the handle. It wouldn't open, he would be trapped inside, and he could either wait for 'it' to find him, or he could find 'it' first. Naturally, he opted for the latter._

_Using his outstretched hand as a guide, he carefully made his way through the kitchen. His sharp eyes picking out the glint of steel, a knife! Stealing over to the countertop, in what looked to be the kitchen; he picked it up, and slid it into the back of his waistband. Now, he had an advantage. Feeling a bit more confident, Tommy reached out, and then jumped back as he touched something warm. Tanya and Aisha stood in front of him, frozen, and apparently mid-flight from an unseen force. Their faces frozen in silent terror, as they looked back, pointing wildly towards the living room where he could see the last step of a flight of stairs. _

_Side-stepping the girls, Tommy frowned as he saw Rocky in mid-air, hovering above a fat lounge chair, and spilling his beer. Behind him lay Adam on couch, looking bewildered as he stared upwards. For a split-second the ghosts of faded screams echoed through the house, a blend of his friend's voices. Sneaking on the balls of his feet, he peeked around the corner towards the stairs. He could see Kat crouched in the middle, her back pressed against the wall, and her hands clawing out into nothingness as she tried to escape…escape what? Remembering the knife, Tommy stepped into the living room, his hand tightening on the blade as Kim raced down the stairs screaming for Billy, slowing down until he could see the individual path of each droplet of beer as she ran through the spray. Finally freezing at the sliding glass doors where he could see the blue ranger standing on the deck, and then she wasn't-_

"_Beware the eaters of rot, who prey on the still-new flesh, and come bearing the gifts of blood." Tommy just stared at her as the house began to collapse around them; the walls twisting inwards and the floor dissolving into a black hole. Screaming her name, he tried to get to her –_

"Kimberly!" Tommy jerked as hands pressed him down against a firm, soft surface. A monitor was going crazy in the background, and someone was holding his head. Opening his eyes, he looked up into the worried faces of Adam, Billy, Zack, Rocky, and Erica.

_Erica? Wait, is it Friday? _

Looking around he realized he was lying in a hospital, soaked in his own sickly-sweet fear sweat, and held down by his friends who were trying to soothe him. The last thing he remembered was being dragged into the back of a van, and then nothing. Every inch of his body ached, and his wet sheets and gown caused him to shiver. Cold air pricked at his arms, and raised his skin into gooseflesh. Vaguely, he could hear Adam saying something, but his ears felt like they were full of buzzing cotton. Instinct told him this world was real, that his friends were real, and it really was his older sister pushing his damp hair out of his eyes.

"Do you know where you are?" Erica peered down at him, her blonde hair haloing her owlish face. Up close Tommy could see where her mascara and foundation had packed into the faint creases under her eyes. Her clothes were rumpled, and there were bruises all over her arms from where he had fought. Having been kidnapped and drugged multiple times, he knew he was coming down from a powerful narcotic. Given that everyone looked like they'd just gone ten rounds with Rita's super putties, it was obvious he'd gone on a trip – a bad one. Clearing his throat, which felt like it was made of sandpaper, he forced himself to speak.

"…hospital…"

"Do you know who I am?"

"…my sister…"

"Where are we?"

"…Arizona…"

"And you are?"

"Thomas Kenneth Oliver...ten-sixteen-eighty is my birthday, and you know my social."

"You still don't know your own social security number?"

"…starts with a two…" Erica rolled her eyes, and moved aside as a nurse appeared armed with blankets, and a fresh gown. Glancing about, she stared pointedly at the other rangers who folded their arms and stared back.

"I need to change the patient."

"Then change him," grumbled Erica. "Look, we've all known each other since high school, and we've all seen each other naked." It was true. More than once, no thanks to one of Rita or Zedd's slime monsters, they had to clean up at the Command Center, and that consisted of standing in a large room that sprayed water from the ceiling and walls. Privacy wasn't an option. Stepping forward, Rocky diffused the situation by putting on his famous DeSantos charm.

"Look, I know this isn't your normal MO, but you were in the emergency room when they bought him in. Do you really want to be in here alone with him?"

"Close the door, and stand over there." The older woman worked quickly, changing the bedding, and maneuvering him into a clean gown. Running her eyes over his lean form, Erica paused at his groin, and cracked a wry grin.

"Wow, you really are cold." Shocked, Tommy just gaped at his older sibling.

"I'm naked, high, beat to hell, and you're standing here making fun of my penis?"

"I know, right?" Brother and sister just stared at one another for several long minutes, before Tommy snorted, and laughed. Reaching up, he carefully folded his arms around his sister, who pulled him into a tight hug.

"You're really here, you're real."

"I took an earlier flight, I was going to surprise you, but I you beat me to it." Sinking back onto the pillows, Tommy shook his head.

"I was going to meet with the guys, and I was jumped by these other guys, and they were dressed like ninjas, and they just…"

"We can talk about that later, Zack has people searching the area where they found you, and there's an APB for the van."

"What did they do to me?"

"Injected you with horse tranquilizers, robbed you blind, and then dumped your naked behind in an empty parking lot."

"They did this for a hundred dollars, a t-shirt, and a pair of khakis?"

"Looks like it." Tommy just gaped at Erica as his plans to settle down and live a quiet life slipped away like water from a paper cup. Exhausted, he watched as Jason started a new IV, and flushed the line with a burst of saline. Dumping the syringe in the nearby red box, he uncapped two more, and slid them into the white plastic port.

"What is that?"

"Broad-spectrum antibiotics and anti-virals," said Jason. "We don't know if the needle they used to drug you with was clean. So, I want to make sure that we scrub your system."

"Where did you get anti-virals?"

"Tucson Medical Campus is part of the Interplanetary Commission for Scientific and Medical Exchange." Jason disposed of the second sharp, and then picked up the third and final one. "This means we get to test out and use all of the cool biotech as soon as the government clears it for civilian use."

"…that's nice…" Adam was saying something about spending the night, and so was Rocky, but Tommy was too tired to really pay attention. All he cared about was getting some sleep, grateful that he was still alive, and not lying in a ditch. Warm, safe, surrounded by family and friends, he allowed himself to pass out. Assured that he was actually asleep, Jason and Erica left the others to figure out sleeping arrangements, and stepped out into the hallway. For a second they just stood there, nodding politely at some random staff, until Erica stepped closer and lowered her voice.

"Adam filled me in on the way over. I thought the plan was to wait?"

"It was, until things started happening. How come you didn't tell us he was coming?"

"He didn't say anything until the last minute, the same with Haley."

"It doesn't matter, by the time anyone figures anything out we'll have him back the way he was."

"Are you sure he'll be all right?" Looking around, Jason stepped in closer, until his mouth was next to her ear -

"We'll know in a week."


	7. Chapter 7

Title: In The Path of The Skin-Walker

Author: RedMyst

Rating: M

Spoilers: MMPR and MMPR:DT

Summary: After accepting a position at a prestigious university, Dr. Thomas Oliver finds himself unraveling a dark secret about his family's history involving the supernatural, and the Navajo nation.

Disclaimer: I don't own them.

Author's Note: So, what do we know of Nancy Red Eagle? My Beta and I have been struggling with this question, while working on this chapter. We know that Nancy was a respected woman, with a long career in local law enforcement, and a detective with the Tucson Police Department at the time of her death. We know that she was working a case in which her husband, Joseph Red Eagle, was implicated as being involved in a series of ritual murders. We know that on the night she died, she was defending Tommy and Erica from her father, and we know something else – that supernatural forces were in play.

The trick lies in tying it into the overall Alternate Universe my Beta and I are creating. This is, after all, the beginning of a series that will take us up into a new generation of power rangers – _Aeon _– set in the future. In the meantime, we're going to start answering some of the questions we presented in Chapter Four, and maybe creating a few more. We shall see… :-)

_August 25th, 2011_

"_Fair"_

_Attorney Pat Cochran tapped the 'send' icon on the touch screen of his Nokia, and hurried through the darkened hallways of Goldman and Hertz. The twelve-story glass building housing the firm had emptied out hours ago, Cochran burning the midnight oil as he worked a case, but not one from his docket. This one was old, personal, and packed tight in the blue and white USPS box shoved under his arm. Shouldering his heavy black briefcase, he nonchalantly slipped the package – already marked with postage – into the waiting bin of outgoing mail. Nodding to himself, the lawyer casually looked about, catching his reflection in a window on the other side of the office. To an outside observer he looked calm, collected – a perfect poker face from years in the courtroom. Underneath, he was nervous as hell. An hour ago, he received a call, when it was over, he immediately he put everything he was working on in the mail. _

_They could not afford, not at such a critical juncture, the risk of having any of the information stolen. It had taken them nearly thirty years to gather it all, one of the many setbacks created by Joseph. Cochran's mouth pressed into a hard line, as he took the time to sort through the mail stacking up in his slot in the cluttered mailroom. It was part of his routine, one he couldn't break, not tonight. Tossing several envelopes in the trash, he put the rest in his briefcase, making a show of looking about cautiously, before placing them inside._

"_C'mon," he muttered to himself. "Take the bait." Closing the lid, he fished his keys out of his pocket. Joseph Red Eagle, even the name sounded bitter as he ambled through the empty firm. Twenty-six years ago, he watched EMTs carry out the man's remains in eight five-gallon buckets, before heading inside, and photographing the grisly crime scene. Normally, Cochran kept the memories of that night shoved in the darkest corner of his mind. Tonight, after taking that call, he found himself mulling it over, remembering the acid bite of heavy ozone in that upper bedroom, and the way Nancy was laid out on the floor-_

"_Hello?" Cochran peered around the empty office. He'd stopped halfway down the hall leading towards the elevator, seemingly lost in thought. Despite the thinning gray hair covering his round head, he had excellent hearing, and was certain he'd heard footsteps near one of the cubicles. Apparently, his ruse was working. Shaking his head, he nonchalantly turned around, and continued on his way even though he could feel the sweat beading at his hairline. The last time he'd felt this way was in that house, specifically, in that room where he'd come face-to-face with pure evil. It left him feeling oily, slick, and made his stomach twist. Cochran's mind tangling in knots as he realized that they would have arrived hours ago, taking advantage of the last-minute exodus of workforce traffic, and concealing themselves in the massive building. Waiting patiently, calculatingly, with the easy confidence granted to a predator._

_It also made them cocky, and he was betting on that smug sense of superiority to pull this off. The information, their precious thirty years of hard labor was disguised as a simple package. While they lay in wait, eager for the coming opportunity, he was creating an elaborate web of disinformation, and at the cost of his own life. Yes, that was how far he was willing to go, how far all of them were willing to go. He had hoped to die old, older than fifty-eight, but –_

"…_things never quite work out that way." Even if he managed to survive the night, which he highly doubted, the Others' would have no further use for him. Even so, he had no regrets about his servitude. Not many men could go to their grave knowing they'd helped prevent the extinction of a new race. Taking one last look around, he made a show of checking his briefcase. Inside were copies, decoys. Hopefully, by the time his forgery was realized the originals would be in the right hands. _

_Closing the case with a dull 'snap', he paused as the hairs stood up on the back of his neck. Somewhere, in a narrow gap between lines of cubicles; he got the distinct impression of being watched. His sharp blue eyes easily picking out the edges of a figure before it dissolved into shadows. Properly spooked, Cochran hurried towards the elevator. His progress hindered by a loping gait, a permanent souvenir from a drug bust gone sideways. Back in the day he was working his way up the ranks of the Tucson Police Department, making a name for himself as a capable and dedicated beat cop. Were it not for the .38 slug imbedded in his hip, he could have made Captain._

_At the moment, he was selling the biggest bluff of his career. Glancing about nervously as he waited for the elevator, Cochran clutched at the case, and dashed inside the moment the doors slid open. Safely enclosed in the car, he let out a slow breath, and checked his watch. Ten minutes until midnight. By now Angela and Marie would be gathering the others, calling forth The Body, and surrounding the children. The children! Cochran closed his eyes, and shook his head. They hadn't anticipated their arrival, at least not now, not when everything was so critical, but perhaps it was serendipitous. Twenty-four hours ago, they released the youngest from the hospital. Hopefully, in the coming days he would become an asset instead of a liability._

_The elevator chimed, signaling that he'd arrived. As soon as the doors opened, he made another show of checking the black leather bag case. Reassured that the papers were indeed there, he pulled on his game face, and stepped out into the lobby. The sense of being watched was stronger than ever. Sweat inching across Cochran's brow, as he strode past the security desk. _

"_Night Bill," he said, nodding at the young African-American man housed behind the grey desk. Outside of the double glass doors, he looked around, and spotted his car - a bright red 2000 Chevy Corvette - parked at the far end of the lot. As luck would have it the light illuminating the west side was blown out. Smiling grimly, he walked over to the side of his vehicle, and fumbled with his keys. Naturally, they slipped out of his hands, and tumbled onto the ground. Swearing, he reached down, and was halfway up from retrieving them when his phone vibrated. Digging it out of his pocket, he tabbed the blinking envelope in the middle of the screen, and read the text -_

"_Seven"_

_Cochran felt his blood freeze, along with the air which had gained a chill, and gone still. Pocketing the phone, he reached around towards his back; his hand just-closing on the small revolver tucked in his waistband when he heard footsteps rushing towards him. He had just enough time to see a flash of red eyes and dirty blonde hair before she slammed into him; one terrible scream ripping through the night, and then nothing. By the time Bill responded, aided by two other security guards, it was over, and Cochran was stone-dead. Panicked voices barked orders and calls for backup in and out of microphones, and sirens wailed. Waiting, guarding the scene, Bill knelt down, and closed Cochran's empty eyes. His face was bloodless, yet in death he wore a smile, one that not only cast irony over the gruesome mess, but mocked his executioner's smug sense of superiority._

_She'd taken the briefcase._


	8. Chapter 8

Title: In The Path of The Skin-Walker

Author: RedMyst

Rating: M

Spoilers: MMPR and MMPR:DT

Summary: After accepting a position at a prestigious university, Dr. Thomas Oliver finds himself unraveling a dark secret about his family's history involving the supernatural, and the Navajo nation.

Disclaimer: I don't own them.

Author's Note: Feed the feedback monster!

_August 26th, 2011_

_Bright lights were everywhere. Dark figures moved in the background, the foreground, securing him to the table. What table? What was this place? Where had they taken him? He could feel the tightening pressure on his legs, forearms, and across his pelvis. He wanted to fight, he wanted to make them to stop, but he couldn't move, and they were putting something in his mouth- _

"No!"

Tommy woke with a start, beads of sweat pouring down his face, and onto his smashed pillow. For a second, he lay there panting, fingers digging into the mattress, until something tugged off his covers. Screaming, he kicked wildly – despite the pain in his damaged leg - at the unseen force pulling back the sweat-soaked sheets. Crushing himself against the headboard, he looked about wildly, arms held out in front of him in defense as he tried to focus. He was in his bedroom, in his own bed, in his parent's house, and there was a human hand on his nightstand.

"Shit!" Jerking back, he looked up into the surprised face of Kimberly Ann Hart. The former pink ranger stood over him, holding his bunched-up wet sheets, and watching him with wide brown eyes. Embarrassed, he felt his body curl itself into a ball, his knees tucking up under his chin, and his arms wrapping around them tight as they stared at one another. The last time he had seen her, the last time he had been this close to her, was last year, when he fell off his roof, and broke his arm and ribs. Licking his dry lips, he managed to find his voice.

"Um, hey…"

"Hey…"

Kimberly looked much the same as she had back in high school, the only difference was that she had a few extra curves; and long hair that ended just past her butt. She was tanned from the Arizona sun, and the soft pink tank top she wore accentuated her round breasts. Black shorts clung to her hips, revealing well-toned bronze legs, and her bare feet sported delicate silver rings on her small toes.

"I had a bad dream," he said sheepishly.

"I can tell," she said, looking down at the wet bundles of cloth. "You were fighting someone." From what Zack had told him, once he was lucid, Kimberly witnessed the tail-end of his abduction. On her way to meet up with Jason and the others, she saw the men force him into the van, and take off. By the time she reached the parking lot, they were pulling out onto the highway. Fortunately, she was able to catch the first three numbers of their license plate. After a six-hour manhunt, Tommy was found, but not his abductors. Personally, the other rangers could care less about the last part, what mattered was that they found _him._

"Yeah, someone was holding me down."

"Do you remember who?"

"No, I couldn't see." Without his glasses, he was virtually blind, unable to see anything past twenty feet except blurs. Rubbing his eyes, which were aching, he forced himself to calm down. After a thirty-six hour stay in the hospital, Tommy had been released AMA. Erica making the call after a member of the paparazzi tried to sneak in, and a horrific three-hour interrogation by law enforcement. No matter how hard the investigators pushed, Tommy couldn't remember anything after he was put in the van. Unfortunately, they kept hammering him until he had a meltdown sending Erica into Big Mean Older Sister Mode. Now, Tommy was at home. Safe from the media camped out in Tucson Medical Campus' parking lot, and protected from questioning - thanks to Zack – until further notice.

"How do you feel?" Kim dumped the soiled sheets into his hamper. Fishing a dry set out of the closet, she motioned for him to scoot off the bed so she could grab the mattress cover. Crawling onto the floor, Tommy watched her change the bedding. Minus the damage to the flooring, plus whatever was behind the mess of padlocks barring The Room, his parent's house was relatively intact, and cozy thanks to the odd array of corners and cubbyholes in the walls. It made him feel better somehow, and he relaxed despite the gnawing pain in his gut.

"Like someone twisted up my insides, I'm still getting cramps." Jason figured his abductors had bruised his abdominal muscles when they pushed him down in the van. Tommy grimacing as he re-curled into a ball. "I swear, I ever find out who those jerks are they're getting major payback."

"Before or after they kick your butt again? I need to know, so I can call Jason to rescue you." Kim joked, nimbly dodging the pillow he'd thrown at her.

"Hey, I do not need Tyrannosaur-brain to rescue me!"

"Says the guy with the record for the most kidnappings, it's like wherever you go you have to get carried off by a bunch of sick weirdos."

"I do not, besides that was the old Tommy. The new Tommy is just your average mugging victim."

"And the ninjas are what exactly?"

"That's not the point. The point is that I'm done living the way I've lived for the past ten years."

"You mean you're not going to live in a remote farmhouse at the edge of a large forest?" Kim glanced over her shoulder towards the window, her large brown eyes taking in the Arizona wilderness that surrounded his family's ranch. Concealed by a winding driveway, and a tangled mess of trees and brush, Tommy's house was not an easy place to find. Ignoring her, Tommy stretched out his injured leg, and poked at the spandex brace encircling his thigh.

"It means I'm going to put my life back the way it should have been, and not what it has become."

"There's nothing wrong with your life."

"Yes there is."

"What?"

"I'm lonely."

"Then go out more." Tommy shook his head, he didn't want to just go out, and do something. He wanted to go out and do something with _her_, unfortunately for that to happen they had to have a talk, a real one, and for that to happen -

"I need to get rid of all the things that are making me unhappy."

"Is that why you left your job?"

"Part of it, the rest was realizing I was about to spend the rest of my life as high school science teacher in Reefside."

"You seemed happy when I saw you."

"Kim, I was three-hundred pounds, with glasses, and a beard. I looked like one of those guys who live in their parent's basement, surrounded by Princess Leia posters."

"You weren't three-hundred pounds, and you have toy dinosaurs and robots on your shelves."

"Those aren't toys, those are _models_, and I guarantee that if I wasn't lugging around an extra twenty pounds, I would have creamed those guys in the park."

"I'm just glad they let you go, and didn't do something terrible."

"Yeah, like kill me." Kim stared at Tommy from across the bed, an odd look shadowing her face as his comment sank in.

"That's not funny," she knew he meant it jokingly, but it was true. The men who took him could have killed him, buried his body somewhere out in the desert, and they would have been none the wiser. Since upsetting Kim was the last thing he wanted to do, Tommy changed the subject.

"I was thinking I should shave my goatee."

"Absolutely not," snapped Kim, resuming making the bed. "It looks good on you."

"That's not what you said last year."

"That's because last year you had a beard, goatees are different."

"I find your opinion to be biased."

"Good thing I based it on the feedback from my co-workers who saw your picture."

"You have a picture of me?"

"You have one of me."

"Yeah, but that's…different. I have a bad memory."Despite a decent crack on the head and a couple near-death experiences, Tommy looked much as he had in high school. The only difference was that he was twenty pounds heavier, and his hair several inches shorter. Tugging the cover over the mattress, Kim ignored his Very Lame Lie, and watched as he successfully tugged off his brace.

"Hey, you're not supposed to take that off!"

"I don't care, it itches," groused Tommy, scratching at his thigh. "I swear, those guys are toast if I ever get my hands on them. I had a bad trip from that crap they gave me, and they fucked up my leg."

"It'll only get worse, if you don't keep it wrapped." The thin bone surrounding the screws holding the plate to his femur had fractured, if he wasn't careful the bone itself could snap. If that happened, Tommy could kiss his life as a cane-free man goodbye.

"I'll put it back on, okay? I just need a break from the itching."

"Are you sure you don't need a break from anything else?"

"What do you mean?"

"Erica told me about your plan, before she went to sleep." The elder Oliver was downstairs, passed out on the futon her brother used as a couch. Exhausted after working double time to make sure the house was ready for when her brother came home. "Jason's worried it might be too much right now."

"Jason's middle name is 'worry', I'll be fine. I'm not going to abandon this just because a pack of idiots kidnapped and mugged me for eighty bucks, and clothes I've had since college."

"Please don't tell me that."

"What? They were perfectly fine." Kim rolled her eyes, spreading out a dark green comforter, and topping it with matching pillows.

"What happened to the ones I bought you?"

"Huh?"

"Your clothes I bought you last year, remember? The day before Jason and I left, we took you to the mall, and bought you almost an entire wardrobe."

"They're still in the bags in my closet."

"TOMMY!"

"What? I've just spent the last two years teaching high school. Trust me, you don't want to wear designer when you're dissecting a pig."

"Well, you're no longer dissecting pigs."

"No, I'm just going to be crawling in and out of mud holes, and hauling filthy dinosaur bones in my jeep."

"Are you seriously asking me to believe that you never go anyplace nice?"

"Why would I do that?"

"Because that is what single, attractive young men do at your age."

"Yeah, I tried that, and then a bunch of goons hurled me into the back of their van. Chicks don't go for guys like me."

"Oh whatever," she had finished making the bed, and was now waiting for him to climb back in. "If Lord Zedd can find someone, I'm sure you can too." Tommy gaped at Kim, the former ranger mentally replaying her comment to make sure he'd heard correctly.

"Did you just compare me to Lord Zedd?"

"Okay, bad example, but I'm just saying I don't think you're going to spend the rest of your life miserable and alone." Heading into the bathroom, Kim rummaged around in a large shopping bag, and retrieved a small white roll. "Here," said Kim, emerging with a roll of elastic tape. Gymnasts used it to compress joints to both prevent and treat sprains, and it was made of a more breathable material than the brace. "Try this, and see if it helps." Shifting, Tommy watched her set the supplies on the nightstand.

Before the fiasco with the van, Jason had texted Kim his entire conversation with their former teammate. Tommy still didn't remember that night, even after sixteen years. His memories buried, along with the knowledge of his true self. Without that last part, Tommy was a shadow of himself, but if everything went according to plan –

"What happens in six weeks?"

"Huh?" Kimberly looked up from where she had been staring at the floor, unaware that she'd drifted off. "Oh, you go back to work."

"Will you be there?" Kim didn't say anything. For years they'd been doing this. Whenever Tommy was injured or ill, she was at his bedside, but the minute he recovered she was gone. It kept them locked in a weird sort of limbo.

"I have no intention of moving from my house, or from Tucson."

"There are other ways to leave someone." Kim didn't say a word, now was not the time to have this conversation.

"We need change your clothes." Looking down, Tommy realized he was soaked to the skin, and shivering slightly.

"Oh…"

"I'll get you something dry," Tommy watched as she tugged a pair of white pajama bottoms and matching shirt out of his drawer. Kneeing it shut, she knelt down, and rolled up the left leg of his sweatpants. The entire limb was purple, to the tune of eggplant, and hot to the touch. Inflammation was part of the healing process, but it left Tommy in an extremely weakened state. Pulling him into a better upright position, she peeled off his wet shirt and pants.

"You've been busy," she said, examining his tattoos. The tiger on his back, a nod to the White Tiger Zord, was new. The large cat was the last element of the Japanese-themed piece covering the right side of his back, arm, and lower side. Camouflaging long-healed burns, and scars from multiple surgeries.

"Yeah, finally got it finished. Three hours in my brother's chair." Tristan Oliver, the eldest of his and Erica's adoptive siblings, was an internationally-renowned tattoo artist, and the reason why Tommy was the only freshman at Angel Grove High with a tomahawk tattoo on his right thigh.

"Are you getting any more?"

"No, are you?" Kim had a smattering of Chinese cherry blossoms on her right shoulder that disappeared below the edge of her tank top. Shaking her head, she helped him wrestle on a clean shirt.

"Not unless I see something I really, really want." Kim dumped his soiled clothes into the nearby hamper, and then helped him roll until he was on all-fours.

"Let's get you back in bed, do you feel up to checking your e-mail?"

"Not really, if there's something important, Erica will either let me know, or take care of it herself." Thanks to his older sibling, his job was safe. It seemed Macalester was the scene of a graduate student's murder shortly before Tommy arrived. Something they failed to disclose, and since there was a decent possibility his abduction was connected the university was liable. Armed with this information, Erica gave them two options with the backing of their family's lawyer. Two hours later, HR signed off on six weeks of emergency medical leave, with full pay, no penalty for absence, and all his classes would be covered by adjunct faculty until he completed his recovery.

"I talked to Jason, and he said you have a 'glorified greenstick fracture' because of the plate." Kim making quotation signs with her fingers. "He said to give you the medication he left to bring your temperature down, and help with the inflammation."

"I think Adam gave it to me last night, little red and black pills?"

"Yeah, the same ones he gave you last year."

"No, those were pink and white."

"Well, whatever it is, it works, and you need to take it for the next three days." Trying his best not to squash her with his weight, Tommy leaned against Kim, and after some careful negotiation managed to get him onto the bed. Crawling under the sheets, he collapsed against the pillows. Kim helped him prop up his leg, and then disappeared into the bathroom. Once she was inside, she let out a shaky breath. Jason had called her the minute he left Tommy, telling her exactly where she needed to be. The fact that she was in the right place at the right time to see the van's license plate wasn't coincidence, but careful planning. Now, if she could just keep him from noticing her jangled nerves -

"Kim?" Orange prescription bottles exploded into the sink, ricocheting off the smooth surface, and clattering about noisily. Swearing, she grabbed the small cylinders, and shoved them into their white bag. "Is everything all right?"

"Yeah, I just managed to dump out the medicine cabinet."

"You need some help?"

"No, I'm good." Kim took a steadying breath, glancing over her shoulder she made sure he was still in the bed. Keeping Tommy in the dark wasn't the only things the others were counting on. Pulling out another white bag from her large pink gym bag, and dumped it out. Plain white bottles rolled across the counter, instructions written in bold black letters covered their surfaces. Each one corresponded to the one the prescriptions Jason had sent home with Tommy, down the color of the pills. Lining up the eight 'official' bottles on the edge of the sink, she dumped out their contents, and replaced them with the others. Dumping the originals into the unmarked bottles, which she then shoved into her bag. She would get rid of them when she went home, not trusting his toilet to keep them down.

"Kim…?"

"I'll be right there." Pouring out an array of pills, she followed the instructions for the original medication since they were the same, and filled a nearby glass with water.

"_When did you become such a skillful liar?" _

_Erica was eating blueberries from a paper bag, and sitting handcuffed to a hard plastic chair. Seemingly oblivious to the heated argument between Zack and the two detectives who put her there, after she kicked them out of Tommy's hospital room. Kim had come to see how he was doing, not expecting to see the elder Oliver parked in the hallway._

"_What do you mean, jail bait?" The nickname was as old as their friendship, inside references to some of her more colorful antics from when they were teens. Tommy wasn't the only member of his family with a juvenile record._

"_About my brother, I'm presuming you're not going to just swoop in and swoop out? Especially since you two are working at the same university, and living in the same neighborhood." Kim, Adam, and Aisha's duplex was literally up the street from Erica and Tommy. Plopping down next to her, Kim raided her blueberry stash._

"_You haven't talked to Jason."_

"_I have talked to Jason," another blueberry popped between the older woman's teeth. "You tried to go around me."_

"_He won't talk to you the same way he'll talk to his best friend."_

"_So, you finally want him back." It wasn't a question, so much as a statement of fact, and she was right. The last time they had a conversation like this, was when they were teenagers, and Kim wanted to date Tommy. Their parents didn't care, but Erica did. She was fiercely protective of him, running off more than one pie-eyed cheerleader, and a couple of closeted jocks. Kim was the only other woman in Tommy's life, besides Haley, that she trusted him with._

"_I don't know what you're talking about."_

"_Yes you do__, unless it was simply a matter of principle when you bitch-slapped Kat for serving him those divorce papers?" Erica smirked at the memory. "Thing is, do you want him back because of who he is, or who he was?"_

"_Does it matter?"_

"_I suppose not," Erica sliding out a smart-assed 'thanks', as one of the detectives un-cuffed her before walking off in a huff. "After all, you're as deep in this shit as the rest of us."_

"_I love your optimism."_

"_I try," quipped Erica. "Just remember So-Cal, I don't like people playing with his heart. Either you still love him, or you don't."_

"_I'm here, aren't I?" Kim folded her arms defensively across her chest. "If I didn't still have feelings for him, I wouldn't have been there all the times he needed me. Not to mention, play party to something that could..." Both women dropped it, noticing they'd drawn the attention of some of the women at the nurses' station._

"_I'll give you credit for caring," said Erica, pausing with one hand on the doorknob of his room. "But are you here for him, or for Jason?" Erica knew about their age-old feud, starting the minute Kim laid eyes on Tommy at a karate match. Last year, Jason tried to restart their relationship, but for the wrong reasons. Namely, the one standing in front of her, eating blueberries out of a bag..._

Kim turned out the bathroom lights, and stepped into the darkening bedroom. Outside, the sun was going down, casting long shadows across the bed where Tommy lay panting, his body rapidly overheating as his healing factor kicked in. Smiling, she handed him the medication which he downed along with the water.'

"How are you feeling?"

"Hot…can't you open the windows?"

"Jason said not to in case you hallucinated again."

"I thought that crap was out of my system?

"Not really, Jason said it could linger for up to a week."

"Great, did he have anything else to add?"

"Keep off your damn leg, or I'll break it myself."

"Nice to see his bedside manners are the same." Whatever Jason prescribed packed a powerful punch, Tommy sinking down into the pillows as the drugs took effect. "Kim, I think I'm going under."

"You need me to sit with you?"

"No, I think I can ride this one out."

"Are you sure?" Kim plucked the glass, which was listing dangerously to one side, from his hand, and sat on the bed. That gnawing in the pit of her stomach was back, along with the hairs on the back of her neck. Looking to her right, she realized she was sitting directly in front of The Room. Red sunlight glinting off the nail heads that held its door shut, and bathing it in an eerie glow that reminded her of Lord Zedd. The similarity gave her the creeps, which was why she jumped when he touched her hand.

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I was just looking at the last bedroom." Kim felt him tense, his dark eyes swinging around to look at her. "Is that where it happened?" Tommy nodded, his fingers curling around hers as shadows danced across his face.

"Yeah, the guy who my parents hired to watch over the place nailed shut the door." Manuel was an odd guy, but his behavior had changed in the weeks leading up to the move. The night he arrived, the older man was agitated, shaky, and kept looking out the window as if someone was there. Tommy figured it was due to the isolation, but after seeing the neatly spaced rows of ten penny nails he wondered if he'd gone senile.

"Have you been in there since it happened?"

"No…our mother never let us go..." Tommy's eyes slid shut, and he was gone. Pulling the blankets up over his shoulders, she checked to make sure the room was secure, and then left him alone in the darkness. Stepping out into the hallway, she gently shut the door, and turned around to find Erica standing next to the bathroom.

"Is he all right?"

"He's asleep." Scratching at her tangled blonde hair, Erica yawned, and popped the bones in her knuckles and wrists. Jerking her head towards the stairs, the two women headed down to the living room where the songstress snagged a pack of cigarettes, and headed outside. Kim followed Erica out the front door, and onto the small stoop. The sun was gone, a large yellow moon creeping up over the mountains in its place. Fishing a cigarette seemingly out of nowhere, Erica lit up, and watched the moon rise.

"I talked to Jason. He said the first phase should start tomorrow."

"I thought it takes ninety-six hours?"

"It does if you don't crash a car at over a hundred miles-an-hour, incur severe brain damage, and turn yourself into a human corn fritter. Besides, this gives us time to get rid of the van."


	9. Chapter 9

Title: In The Path of The Skin-Walker

Author: RedMyst

Rating: M

Spoilers: MMPR and MMPR:DT

Summary: After accepting a position at a prestigious university, Dr. Thomas Oliver finds himself unraveling a dark secret about his family's history involving the supernatural, and the Navajo nation.

Disclaimer: I don't own them.

Author's Note: We start getting some answers! There are major forces at work in this story that are part of the large AU we are creating, and all I will say is that the ones in this chapter are directly connected to Tommy and Erica's mother. Also, don't read this chapter without the lights on . Since we model our characters after actors or actresses we could see playing the 'role' if this were an actual show, we went with Kim Rhodes for our mystery woman, and Irene Bedard for Nancy Red Eagle. Also, for you spoiler junkies out there, no, our mystery woman does not die, and yes her 'companion' is one of the good guys. What am I talking about? You'll just have to read and find out, and as always – feed the feedback monster.

_August 26th, 2011_

"…_and they call it puppy love…"_

_In the long shadows of the Arizona night, the baritone voice of Paul Anka trickled out the half-open windows of a dusty 1969 Mustang. The sleek black vehicle was cleverly hidden, obscured by the Palo Verdes swarming the two-hundred foot ridge overlooking the lone ranch house. Inside sat a woman, thirtyish, with spiky red hair, wearing a black jacket, jeans, and a creamy white tank top. Surveillance was her specialty, thanks to over twenty years with the Tucson Police Department before handing in her badge. Now, she worked as a spy. It was a good living, one that afforded her a measure of anonymity, and the freedom to do as she pleased._

_Shifting uncomfortably, she put down her binoculars, and rubbed at her aching eyes. In the distance, a coyote let out a mournful howl, reminding her that she was alone, and vulnerable outside the steel body of the Mustang. Instinctively she reached for the Colt .45 resting in her lap, the weapon loaded, and at the ready. After what happened to Cochran, the gory details burning up the now-silent scanner on the dash, she wasn't taking any chances. Letting out a slow breath she glanced over at the high-tech laptop sitting in the passenger seat, the grainy screen displaying the dim interior of one of the ranch house's bedrooms._

_The camera, hidden in the ceiling, was pointed at the large bed. Specifically, it was pointed at the young man lying on it. Fifteen years ago he showed up at her door asking questions, and demanding information about her former partner – his mother – Nancy Red Eagle. It was definitely a surprise to her, and a shock to his friends when they realized that in twenty years she hadn't aged a day. It was why she kept a low profile, while she commended the U.N. for their efforts to open diplomatic relations with non-hostile alien governments, in truth the vast majority of Earth's people were not ready for coexistence. Not after having their relatives killed and homes destroyed no thanks to Rita Repulsa, Lord Zedd, Master Vile, and every other Dark Specter sycophant who tried to conquer the blackwater planet. Last week, an angry mob in Hong Kong attacked a girl whom they thought was an alien, and beat her unconscious. Three days later, the same happened in New York, but that time the victim – a young man in his twenties – died from the assault._

_Until humans came to the realization that not every alien wanted to conquer their planet or enslave them, she was keeping her head down. The same was true for her people. Although, there were some humans who knew of her race, and treated them as friends and allies. When her people first arrived, some ten-thousand years before Zordon, the ancestors of the Navajo had viewed them as gods, bringing gifts of food and supplies to the mouths of the caves where they lived. Over the centuries, this view evolved, and they were no longer deities, but guardians and guides. The Hopi called them the Hisatsinom, the Navajo named them the Ant People, and the Belegana lumped them together as the Anasazi or 'ancient ones' from the Dine' language. All of them were true, which was why it was so important to stop the Inner Circle._

"…_the Inner Circle…what a joke…" Picking up the binoculars, she peered down at the ranch house. Once upon a time, Nancy Red Eagle's family had been successful cattle ranchers. The scope of their operation still visible in the massive buildings, and rusting equipment that dotted the 480 acre property. However, after her parents died Nancy sold off the Simmental and Black Angus herds, and put everything into a trust for her children. The amassed wealth was one of the so-called 'reasons' the tribe gave as to why they sent the youngest two outside for adoption. Admittedly, it sounded better than the truth, but she figured that's why they kept the oldest boy. Unlike his brother and sister, he never saw what was in their house that night. He didn't see what his father became, what happened in that barricaded upper room, or what their mother found when she arrived. Adjusting the lens, she scanned the empty front yard, and checked for movement in the back._

_The ridge where she was sitting formed a natural border, cutting off the west side of the property from the deep valley a quarter-mile south of her position. On the north end was a deep canal, the water shimmering in the moonlight, and to the east was a mess of mesquites and sycamores. The only other source of life, besides herself, was the occasional fox darting in and out of the brush. Back in the day, there were huge guard dogs - some sort of doberman mix - chained to the front and back of the house. That last investigation, the one that revealed the Inner Circle, had changed Nancy. The boy had taken down the bars covering the windows, and removed the six-foot chain link fence that once surrounded the house. Yet, that didn't change the fact that when you went in the house it became obvious that Nancy was desperately trying to keep something out, something other than the Circle.  
_

_Pushing aside that train of thought, all too aware of her isolated surroundings, the woman refocused on the ranch. Surveillance was her specialty, but it was also boring. Unrelenting ennui was why her mind kept wandering into places she'd rather not go. It was bad enough The Body had here out here in the middle of the night, eating cold baloney sandwiches, and watching Nancy's son work his way through the first Phase. The last thing she needed to think about was her partner's death. After all, it was her life that kept her alive in the memories of the residents of Tucson. Joseph wouldn't tarnish that, couldn't, and the same was true for his children. None of them had their father's stain, and The Body planned to keep it that way. Leaning back in her seat, she put down the binoculars, and stared up into the night sky.  
_

_The light pollution from the nearby metropolis turned the thin high clouds red, a stark contrast to the enormous yellow moon hovering overhead. The stars were faint, save the ones composing Orion. Supposedly the brightest one – Betelgeuse – was where her people had come from, fleeing the destruction of their world after their sun was forced into an artificial supernova. The light from the red giant was only just reaching Earth, but their system was long gone. Most of their people had resettled near commerce planets, rebuilding their societies into powerful civilizations like Inquiris or Lenarn, but the rest chose a simpler path. Colonizing on blackwater planets, they honed their technology based on an ecological philosophy, and usually lived in places the aboriginal inhabitants - if there were any - considered desolate and inhospitable. Subterranean by nature, humans had no idea of the size and scope of the underground and undersea colonies dotting their planet. True, on worlds where the locals weren't belligerent, the Shaa'drick lived above ground, but for the most part they didn't. Which was why most humans weren't aware of the billion or so Shaa'drick that shared their planet, and lived right down the street. _

_Out of sight was definitely out of mind.  
_

_Rummaging in her jacket, she pulled out a Marlboro, and lit the narrow cigarettes. Taking a long pull, she glanced out the driver's side window, and froze. On top of being Arizona's second largest city, Tucson also held the title as the desert southwest's second largest UFO hotspot. The Red Eagle ranch was no different. Popping the door of the Mustang, she stepped out into the cool night air, her breath forming puffs of white mist as she shut the door, and walked along the top of the two-hundred foot ridge. Down below she could see a myriad of blue lights dancing about the property, the small orbs darting in and out of the brush, and weaving through the tangled treetops. Fingering the butt of the .45, she glanced back at the car. Reassuring herself that it was secure, she continued down the narrow trail._

_The lights had stopped their odd dance in the brush, and now surrounded the house in a large circle. From her position, she counted twenty in all, estimating them to be roughly the size of basketballs. To the casual observer, they were UFOs, but to her they were surveillance drones. This was odd because while her people – the Shaa'drick – had theirs in mothballs, and the ones used by the Inner Circle were typically red. The only other source was the Council of Light, but those were universally white, and no bigger than a softball. No, these were definitely Shaa'drick, the design was unmistakable, but…who?_

_Crouching down in the brush, she started to pick her way down the slippery slope of the ridge to get a closer look when she felt a huge rush of wind as something very big flew past, just missing her. Instinctively, she ducked. Whatever it was, it had missed her by a few feet, and created significant turbulence when it went by._

"_What the hell was that?" The desert was silent, save the strange rush of wind. There was no way it was a bat, it was too big and too fast. Judging by the sound it was very solid and bulky. Looking about, she reassured herself that whatever it was had gone, and resumed her descent. Not five minutes later, it happened again, and this time it was even closer. Ducking again, she looked about wildly. The moon lit up the entire property, and to her sensitive eyes the place was as bright as day. As a result she should have seen a silhouette, something, especially given the size, but she saw nothing. _

_Uneasy, she decided to go back, her mind harkening back to Nancy. Specifically, the conversation they had in 1984, two days before she died. They were sitting in her car, the Mustang, drinking soda, and listening to the radio. Blessed with an extraordinary long lifespan, compared to that of a human, they were talking about the different identities she had assumed over the years before becoming a police officer. Not much was known about Nancy's past, only that she came from a ranching family, and had lived in Arizona her entire life. They were talking about the Civil War when Nancy suddenly went silent, her large dark eyes peering out into the darkness at something only she could see, eventually getting out of the car, and standing in the middle of the desert. Still staring into the black abyss, alert, and listening to something that sounded like a dull electrical hum._

_For the longest time, she saw nothing, but then she spotted what looked like the light of an RV about a half-mile to the north of where they were parked. They had driven a good ten miles outside of town that night, not a soul for miles. Only an idiot would drive an RV into the desert, but there it was. Standing there, surrounded by silence, she realized that she couldn't hear the vehicle's engine, and as they watched she realized it wasn't an RV, but a craft of some sort. The object which sported a bright light in the front and a red one in the back, lifted up, and climbed smoothly and slowly above the tree line revealing an oblong body shaped like a refrigerator. The two women watched it disappear into the night, there was no sound._

_Crawling up the ridge, she felt cold chills running though her body, even though her light jacket kept out the chilly desert air. Despite twenty years on the force, seeing the lights in conjunction with the memory left her frightened, and deeply disturbed. Keeping her hand on her weapon, she strode back to the Mustang, and got inside. Locking the doors, she checked the back seat, and glanced down at the ranch house. The lights were still there, hovering silently in their strange circle. There was something about them that was calming, some instinct telling her that whomever or whatever sent them was benevolent, and shared the same goal as The Body – the protection of Erica and Tommy Oliver. Naturally, this made her even more uneasy, especially when she realized that her fear had dissipated the minute she got back in the car. Had something purposely chased her away from the house, and was that something the mysterious Others?_

_Humans weren't the only ones with bogeymen and superstitions, Shaa'drick had them as well. The Others could be anything, but most often they were thought of as being their immediate ancestors who survived the Great War that decimated their race. Observing and occasionally abducting their people, specifically their children, for God-knew-what reason, and returning them with a deep-seated fear and dislike of all things Inner Circle. This included their cousins on other worlds, with the exception of the Inquirans. Apparently, after interbreeding with the aboriginal race, they were too genetically dissimilar to their immediate ancestors. However, it was the Inquirans who preserved the record of their genocidal war. According to the history it was the Dark Shaa'drick - the ancestors of the ones hunting the Oliver children - who started the conflict. _

_Believing themselves to be living gods, they demanded worship and servitude from less developed races, and exterminated the advanced ones. Why? To eliminate the risk of one of them reaching their potential, and achieving equal footing within the galactic community. Supposedly, this was why the Inner Circle formed The Plan, humans had the potential, and with proper guidance from the Council they would achieve it within the next two-hundred years. A bat of an eye for long-lived beings like herself, and if that happened they would be able to detect the Shaa'drick. Specifically, if they were in bed with the Council, they would be able to locate the Dark Shaa'drick, and rid their world of their influence. Shaking her head, she tapped the spacebar on the laptop, taking it out of sleep mode. The idea of ruling humans was stupid, they were unruly, unpredictable, and couldn't even subjugate themselves for longer than a century. Not to mention their evolutionary capability, their DNA adaptable to the point they were compatible with many of the humanoid species within the galaxy - including the Shaa'drick, and that could be due to an earlier encounter.  
_

_With the destruction of their world, came the loss of their racial knowledge. They knew the long-dead planet that once orbited Betelgeuse was not their original homeworld, abandoned colonies were scattered across the Andromeda Galaxy and Magellanic Cloud, and they pointed to the mysterious Triangulum Galaxy. Yet when, or how, or why their people left was lost. What they did know was that ancient Shaa'drick imported canines into the known universe, and they got them from Earth. Not only that, the so-called junk DNA carried around by humans had Shaa'drick markers. No other aboriginal race shared that connection. Who and what humans exactly were, was a mystery, and it had gained the attention of the Others. Staring at the grainy monitor, she watched as Tommy rolled onto his back. A smaller screen in the corner displayed his sister, Erica sound asleep on her brother's futon in the living room. Clicking to enlarge the image of his sister, she swore as the laptop suddenly powered off. Pressing the power button, she stared incredulously at the little green light that indicated battery life. It was blinking red, impossible since she charged it before leaving.  
_

_Realizing that she would have to get out of her car, pop the trunk, and get out the spare she opted to have a quick smoke before stepping out into the cold. Once the sun went down, temperatures could drop as low as minus fifteen, colder depending on where you were. Right now, it was about forty degrees outside, and added a stiff bite to the air. Tugging out another cigarette, she had just lit the tiny white tube when she realized the moon had disappeared. Looking up, she felt the cigarette drop as she stared through the windshield at the underside of a massive black triangle drifting slowly over the ridge. The air electric as it moved to hover over the ranch house. Immediately, the blue lights went black, and the air became thick with an intense energy. Her whole body felt charged, as though touching a live wire. Blood roared in her ears, before giving way to an intense high-pitched tone. A voice in the back of her mind told her to leave, now, and before she knew it she was starting the Mustang._

_It was as if she was on autopilot, her body seemed to move independently as the energy pulled her away. Through the haze she heard the engine start, and blinked from the sudden brightness of the headlights. For a moment, she froze, and the energy took over. In front of her car was some creature that was half man-half beast, with glowing red eyes, and gnarly arms covered in coarse hair._

_A Skinwalker._

_Through her, the energy rammed the car into gear, pounded the gas pedal, and zoomed past the beast. Flying down the narrow dirt trail that led off the ridge, she felt her head turn to look in the rearview mirror. To her horror, it was running behind the car, keeping pace even though the needle was creeping above seventy. The long arms swiping at the trunk as it tried to grab hold, and crawl onto the roof. Flooring it, the Mustang bounced wildly over ruts, sending clouds of dust in its wake before shooting onto the highway. The thing was running alongside the car, trying to open the door, and clawing at the window which she'd thankfully rolled up before her little excursion. Pushing it, she felt the car accelerate, whatever it was controlling her was trying to lose her inhuman pursuer. She had no idea which one it was, it could be any of them, but she would be damned if she would let herself become the latest victim of the Circle. The voice told her not to worry, to relax as they rounded a sharp corner, and the thing latched onto the vehicle. The car swerved across the lanes, panic creeping through the fog, only to be pushed away by the Other. _

_Warmth replaced the fog, the energy turning her head to see a rapidly flashing light. A blue orb was flying in the tree line parallel to her car. Apparently, the Skinwalker saw it too, because it let go, and tumbled off into the street seconds before a blinding flash forced her to slam on the brakes, and lay rubber for almost a hundred yards before the Mustang stopped. She was back, the energy and voice gone, along with the euphoric haze. The sudden change in control left her gasping, whatever was in her was old, powerful, and capable of taking over a person's mind. Slowly, she sat up, and slumped against the seat. Adaptation or no, bright light still hurt, and it was some time before she could see without halos and spots. When her vision cleared she realized that her headlights were out, the engine off, and the world eerily silent. Blinking hard, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up as the sensitive organs picked out an odd pattern of rainbow-colored lights, similar to that of a kaleidoscope, dancing across the pavement in concentric circles. Reaching behind her, she pulled out her gun, cocked the hammer, and got out of the car. Supernatural abilities or no supernatural abilities, she'd yet to meet an injured Skinwalker who could survive an entire clip of hot lead emptied into their skull. Cautiously, she looked up. The black triangle hovered overhead, emitting no visible light yet the rainbow show continued. Looking down the darkened highway, she noticed a large lump in the middle of the road._

_Unless whomever or whatever was in the craft was up for another round of mind control, or sucked her off the face of the Earth - she was going to investigate. Keeping the gun trained on the creature, she advanced slowly, only to stop as one of the orbs darted out of the underbrush. The thing stopped abruptly in midair, about fifteen feet in front of her hovering silently. This was easily the best view she'd had so far of the drone, able to see that the exterior was clear, hard, and similar to glass. It was roughly the size of a basketball, maybe larger, and appeared to be filled with a swirling, intensely blue liquid substance that seemed to boil. She could hear a faint crackling sound, like static electricity, and as she stared at the object she could feel a deep fear wash over her. It was a Shaa'drick surveillance drone, there was no mistake, and if that was true than what hovered over her car was an Other ship. Paralyzed with the deepest, most visceral fear she had ever felt she watched as it darted into the brush, heading back towards the Red Eagle homestead. Immediately, as soon as it was gone, she felt an overwhelming sense of peace – one strong enough to turn her around, and get back in her car. Starting the engine, she drove away from the ranch, unaware of the pair of luminous blue eyes watching her from the backseat of her car._


	10. Chapter 10

Title: In The Path of The Skin-Walker

Author: RedMyst

Rating: M

Spoilers: MMPR and MMPR:DT

Summary: After accepting a position at a prestigious university, Dr. Thomas Oliver finds himself unraveling a dark secret about his family's history involving the supernatural, and the Navajo nation.

Disclaimer: I don't own them.

Author's Note: It begins…

_August 26th, 2011_

"_Hold on! I need to get something!" It was the fall of 1993, and all hell was breaking loose. Dashing down the stairs of her childhood home, Erica painfully slammed against the wall as the earth shook beneath her feet. Overhead she could hear her older brothers, Tristan and Marcus, shouting for everyone to get out. A monster was tearing across Angel Grove, and outside people were panicking. The police and National Guard were in the streets, barking orders and directions into microphones as they evacuated their neighborhood. Normally the power rangers lured the creatures off to an abandoned quarry outside of town, but something went wrong, and now the beast was crashing through the suburbs hell-bent on destruction._

"_We need to go, now!" Kevin appeared at the top of the stairs, covered in the various critters they kept for pets. Marcus' ferret Bobby peered down at her from his cage, along with her dog, an orange and black mutt named Wire. Bracing herself, she glared up at him from the shaking stairwell._

"_I know, Captain Obvious, and I'm coming!" Muttering under his breath, Kevin took off, and she continued her descent until a sudden jolt pitched her headlong down the stairs. Erica's hands shooting out, and grabbing onto the railing before she cracked her head on the concrete floor of the basement. For a moment everything was still, and then a terrific howl split the air. The creature was close. In the background, she could hear Marcus yelling for everyone to move their asses. They should have left a long time ago, but when it started they thought it was an earthquake. Gathered in the living room, they ignored the rumbling, and continued watching Spencer and Dustin duke it out on the Sega until they heard the siren. Unlike the classic air raid wail, this one was a loud pulsating tone that repeated after five second intervals signaling a bioloid event – or as the rest of the world called it – a monster attack. _

_From the drills at school they already knew what to do, but Erica was still inside along with Dustin. She had no idea what he was looking for, probably the cat, but she was making a beeline for the basement. Specifically, she was heading for the laundry room. Earlier in the week, she'd been wearing a silver chain with a single turquoise bead on it. It had belonged to her biological mother, breaking during a run-in with some putties, and currently in the back pocket of her brother's green cargo pants in the dryer. How did she know that? He'd told her this morning, apparently he'd gone back later, and retrieved it from the grass. On the off chance that their house was smashed flat, like the ones three blocks over, she wanted to make sure she had it. Wobbling through the narrow hallway, she glanced through a half-open door covered in martial arts posters – Tommy's bedroom. The place was clean, if he'd grabbed his laundry, he would have dumped it on his bed. Stumbling through some drywall dust leaking from the ceiling, she lurched into the shaking laundry room._

"_Aha!" The dryer door had swung open, and she could see the pants perched on top of the pile. Reaching inside, she yanked them out, along with several green shirts. Tommy had started wearing green a lot lately, much like those other kids he'd started hanging out with. They all seemed to have some weird obsession with primary colors, well, except for that one – Kimberly - who always wore pink. Digging around in the pockets, she found her necklace, still broken, and shoved it into the front pocket of her jeans. There was something in one of the other pockets, the big one on the right leg, and knowing Tommy it was probably one of his –_

_Erica slowly pulled back her hand, her mouth falling into a small 'o' of surprise as she withdrew the Dragon Dagger. How did she know what it was called? She'd heard the green ranger name it during that fight in the park, when her necklace was broken, and some blue-faced half-monkey creature tried to drag her through a portal. Licking her lips, she took a steadying breath as she put two and two together – the disappearances, the unexplained injuries, the lies their parents were catching him in –_

_Personally, she'd thought it was drugs. After all, he went to most of her shows, beer and bongs were common commodities in the rock world, and God only knew what he'd learned from other kids about passing piss tests for martial arts. After all, he'd managed to pull a clean one just a week after he got a contact high from a party, but this? No, this was way, way bigger than-_

"_Erica." Turning, she saw him watching her from the doorway. Specifically, she saw the green ranger. If she was right, and she usually was, he'd come back for the forgotten blade. If she was right, and she usually was, it was her brother under the mask. Inside, she felt herself go cold, because if she was right, and she usually was, then-_

"_It was you who attacked the city." The green ranger had appeared two months ago, right around the time her brother started his first year of high school, and turned into a complete asshole for three weeks. He was all over the news, wrecking the business district with a dragon-like zord, and then out of the blue he switched sides. A complete 180 at the same time Tommy went back to his usual self. Except, he wasn't. Rapidly becoming a skillful liar with everyone, including her, and for the first time in his life he was keeping a part of himself secret. Now, she knew what that part was._

"_Please, give me the dagger."_

"_No."_

"_Erica…" Glass exploded out of the high narrow windows, and shattered on the floor. Instantly his arms were around her, dragging her into the corner, and covering her body with his as the creature crashed through the row of houses one street over from their own. Its cries were deafening, her hands crushing against her ears, while the shelves pulled free of the studs, and smashed against the floor. Dust from powdered laundry soap burned her throat and nostrils as she was half-carried, half-dragged out of the laundry room, and up the narrow stairs._

"_Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!"_

"_Come on!" The two of them stumbled up the steps, somehow she'd managed to hang on to the Dragon Dagger, and somehow he'd managed to get them both outside. Dumping her on the lawn, he pried the weapon out of her terrified fingers, and then pulled her to her feet._

"_Look, I can't tell you everything, not right now, but as soon as this is over I will. I promise, okay?" She nodded dumbly, a large part of her didn't want to let him go, not after seeing what those creatures were capable of, but she knew she couldn't stop him, and she also knew he might not come back._

"_Tommy-"_

"_Green," he corrected. "Never use my real name, and I know. Okay? I know, now get out of here!" With that he was gone, and a few minutes later she heard the unmistakable sound of the dagger's flute. Checking her pocket to make sure the necklace was still there, she dashed towards street, and found herself standing in the middle of the living room of their natural parents' house. Through the barred windows she could see stars, and overhead the glow of moonlight. In front of her the world crackled with static, the place lit up with a grainy reddish glow that hummed in time with the incessant throbbing. Yes, that sickening noise, like a heartbeat in bass that added fear to the atmosphere. This dread was old and familiar. Erica unsurprised as she turned around, and saw her six-year old self sitting on the floor._

_This was the night._

_Tommy, who had just turned four, was next to her. Finally looking up from the ball of play-dough he'd been smashing, and noticing the strange light. In the moonlight, she could clearly see his face. The curved green eyes, the small downturned mouth, the way he scooted closer to her for protection, and how she instinctively pulled him close in the darkness. David, who was eight, had been sleeping on the couch, but now he was awake. Someone was coming through the front door, around the corner, and then the world was screaming. _

_Calmly, Erica watched David run behind the couch, popping an unseen catch, and loosing the bars on the small hidden back door that opened onto a narrow deck. Darting out, he turned to grab her, only to have it slam shut. Try as she might, she couldn't get it to budge, David pounding on the door, crying, screaming, desperately pulling at the knob. She shouted for him to run, run across the street, and get help. In the background she could hear Tommy screaming, see him pressed against the fireplace, as black hands reached for him. The world slowed down, crawled as she watched herself run between her brother and the phantasm, and scoop him into her arms._

_The hands grabbed for her, their owner's breath on the back of her neck as she ran for the sliding glass doors in the dining room. The throb was thunderous now, along with her heart which raced as she pushed on the wall of glass, and watched the world turn white hot with pain. A scar ran between her spine and her left shoulder blade, ending just above the rise of her butt. Their father had stabbed her, repeatedly, the blows crushed her body against the glass hard enough to make it shatter, and come down in a jagged waterfall. For a split-second Tommy was under her, before the black hands jerked him out of her arms, carrying him upstairs into The Room, and then coming back one more time -_

"_Erica!" She could hear him screaming for her, from the hallway, from the room, from the half-open door, and from above a strange dark voice. Between the glass and the blood, the hands left her for dead, but she wasn't. Some strange energy made her roll across the crackling floor; giving her strength to get on her hands and knees, and crawl up the winding stairwell. She should have died, in the back of her head she could hear her adoptive mother repeating those words over and over again to her husband – she should have died. Yet, she didn't. Instead, she crawled down the hallway towards The Room where she could see her brother through the half-open door. The strange dark voice was shouting now, and she could see him lying on a small table. Tied, crying, twisting, and screaming as their father held him down, and began to cut him –_

"TOMMY!" Erica sat bolt upright on the futon, her sweat-soaked clothes clung to her like a second skin; and she screamed when she realized where she was. Forgetting that she'd moved there, until Rambo jammed his cold nose against her palm, and let out a loud grunt while pawing at her legs. The old dog was used to her nightmares, and his presence snapped her out of it as she stared about the dimly lit room.

It was just after daybreak, Kimberly was long gone, her blankets folded neatly, and piled at the end of the nearby couch. Wiping the sweat for her forehead, Erica forced herself to take slow, measured breaths. She'd been sleeping downstairs, exhausted after spending the last two days cleaning, organizing, and arranging her brother's house.

Deceptively small in appearance, the inside of their house was a two-story wonder; sitting at the edge of 480 acres of land. Tommy, David, and Erica had inherited the property from their mother, Nancy, whose parents were prominent cattle ranchers. Apparently they had a pretty big operation at one point given the size of the abandoned equipment and bars, building their home during the height of their business. The first floor of the house was relatively intact, needing only minor repairs. In the front entry was a set of doors, the first leading to the two-car garage, and the second to a decent-sized laundry room and bath. The foyer, sporting freshly-laid red tile, opened into the kitchen and dining area, the former separated from the latter by a tall counter covered in polished black granite. The latter housing an impressive set of sliding glass doors, opening onto a large stone patio that disappeared into an empty pool.

In the kitchen, the sink, stove, and stainless steel refrigerator were neatly tucked away against the back wall; while another door opened onto a small wood deck. The living room, which faced the kitchen and dining area was large, spacious, and sported a vaulted ceiling broken by high windows. The stairs, which opened out next to the foyer, went up, turned, and up again into a large second floor. To the left, one could look down into the living room, but to the right were two bedrooms, and a guest bath. At the end, next to the stairs, was the master bedroom. Inside, housed in the far wall was a set of French doors granting access to the massive deck that doubled as the garage roof.

Whenever their parents bought them down to inspect the place, they always had to run off some wild-eyed cattle rancher shouting offers. The ranch was prime real estate, but the land had been in their family for centuries. Even before the coming of the _Belegana_, it was theirs, and to sell it…it was one of those cultural things that just didn't translate. Rubbing her eyes, Erica crawled off of the couch, and headed into the small dining area where she unlocked the sliding glass doors. The interior had been redone in a matte white with a yellow base, and as a result the air was heavy and thick with the smell of fresh paint. Frowning at the ratings tags, Erica pushed the doors aside to air out the fumes, and let Rambo go to the bathroom. The old dog disappearing into the brush to relieve himself, before his ancient bladder burst.

Leaving them cracked so he could come back in when he was done, she popped into the kitchen to heat a kettle of water for tea, and then headed upstairs to check on her brother. Trapped in the California foster care system for two hellish years, they had come to rely heavily on one another. Even after they were adopted, and even now as adults. Erica knew Tommy far better than anyone, the only other people who could make that claim was their mother, Dr. Marie Oliver, Jason Lee Scott, and Kimberly Ann Hart. The other rangers from the original teams were also in their inner circle, but they weren't as close as they could be, and in many ways that was a good thing. Erica and her brother weren't normal, not by a long shot, and with shit constantly hitting the fan she didn't want to place _all _of their friends in danger.

Not yet, anyway.

Pausing at the top of the stairs, she stared at the barricaded door at the end of the hall. For reasons known only to him, Manuel, the caretaker their parents had hired to maintain the property, had installed several heavy-duty deadbolts, and multiple padlocks on the battered door of The Room. The aged Mexican going so far as to drive nearly a dozen large ten penny nails into the frame to make sure it couldn't be opened. Most would blame his odd behavior on isolation coupled with superstition, but Erica knew better. There was something evil about The Room, even now at a distance of twenty feet she could feel some sort of dark energy emanating from it. Fingering the narrow silver cross she wore under her shirt, she slowly opened Tommy's bedroom door, and peered into the gloom.

The bed was empty.

For a moment she panicked until she remembered the master bedroom had its own bathroom attached to the walk-in closet, complete with a full bathtub, and shower. Realizing he must be in there, she quietly stepped into the room, and started clearing the bed of the tangled wet sheets. The room reeked of sick-sweat. The white bolts of cloth stained yellow from whatever poisons his body had flushed out of itself, and there was blood on the pillows. Apparently he'd had a severe nosebleed at some point. Erica curling her lips in disgust as she stripped off the stained slipcovers, and dumped them on the floor. Before heading home, Jason had stopped by, and dropped off more of the red and black pills. They were a powerful anti-parasitic, piggybacked on a mild sedative and analgesic, and needed to be administered twice daily until he entered the second Phase.

Letting out a long sigh, Erica sat down hard on the edge of the bed, and stared at the wood floor. The dark oak slats reminded her of Florida, specifically, the night this whole mess started, and the man that used to be her brother disappeared. Tommy knew nothing about himself, or who or what they really were. Not only did he forget everything about his sixteenth year of life, save the breakup, but his true identity as well. A normal person would wonder why a fever preceded a rapid recovery from a severe injury, and why it was the same for both their sister, and their adoptive family. A normal person would wonder why they didn't age, didn't get sick, didn't… Erica shook her head, her dark blue eyes easily spotting the Green ranger morpher in the half-open drawer of the nightstand. _I wish you were here Zordon, you always knew everything that I didn't. Helped us, even when we didn't know we needed it. _Swiping at the undersides of her eyes, since the last thing she wanted was for Tommy to see her cry, she gathered up his discarded nightclothes, and kicked shut the drawer. Now was not the time to sit around blubbering, she needed to be strong. Looking about Erica realized that at some point he must have gotten up, and closed the blinds to the French doors leading out onto the deck. Kimberly had left them open, knowing Tommy liked to see the moon at night.

Quirking up the edge of her mouth, Erica went back to making the bed. Finished, she went over to the nightstand, and took out the morpher. 1993 was a crazy year. After a three-month stint in a youth correction facility, Tommy came home to their parent's decision to move from Reefside to Angel Grove. They were sick of their children being bullied and harassed for not 'fitting in', or playing along with the status quo of the maritime community. Marie and Kenneth Oliver raised their children to think independently, and be authentic to themselves. They would change zip codes, before changing their values. That summer, while Erica established herself as a rising young talent in the local music scene, Tommy stayed home with his nose buried in thick library books about dinosaurs. Paleontology was not something new to Tommy, which was why Erica knew way more about Stegosaurs and the Jurassic Period than any person should.

Reaching into her shirt, she pulled up the gold chain hidden by her collar, and fingered the Dragon Coin. The three-toed footprint emblem was identical to the one scattered all over the Dino Thunder equipment, and throughout Tommy and Anton's labs. It wasn't a coincidence, the older Oliver dropping the neckalce back down her front, and putting the morpher back into the drawer. Haley had texted her last night to let her know that the Dino Rangers were on their way down to Tucson. Apparently, in a moment of temporary insanity, Tommy had tasked them with driving down his vehicles. It wasn't too bad, except Conner was driving Red Lightning instead of Ethan, and Kira had somehow managed to worm her way into driving Erica's green 1969 Dodge Charger. The same Dodge Charger that was souped up to the nth degree from when she and Tommy used to street race, and was so hot that you had to literally stand on the brake pedal to get it to stop.

Since the last thing Tommy needed was a massive stroke, she opted not to tell him unless one of them spattered themselves across the highway. She was pretty sure that if they could handle a thirty-foot, fusion-powered killer robot, they could handle the drive from Reefside to Tucson. Rummaging in her pocket for her cigarettes and lighter, she glanced towards the bathroom to make sure he hadn't come out, and lit up. Twelve years of trying to keep the truth from him, lying constantly along with everyone else, was screwing with her nerves. Frankly, she didn't know how much longer she could do it. Her old standby of being a protective and caring sister was wearing thin. There was a difference between being the sister who used to steal food to feed him, when their shitty foster parents opted not to feed them for a couple of days, and being the sister she was now.

If anything went sideways, she could lose him. Then again, if everything went according to plan, she could still lose him. Ever since the accident, Tommy's health had been tenuous. Aside from burns and broken bones, there was severe nerve damage which left him with progressive blindness, and moderate hearing loss. On top of that, there was the hot mess that was his memory, and once he started the second Phase all bets were off. Without the blocks in place, his mind would dump itself, and that meant that in a matter of days he could remember _everything. _On the one hand, she was glad, because it meant they could stop lying, and deal with their personal shit. On the other, Tommy could go postal, and kick their asses from one side of Arizona to the other. Either way, it wasn't going to be pretty.

Heading downstairs, she rummaged through the five billion bags of stuff Tanya and Aisha had dropped off last night, and chucked her cigarette into the one of the drains in the kitchen sink. On top of being married to Zack, Tanya Taylor was one of Tucson's top real estate agents at Gershwin and Schwartz, one of the largest firms in the city, and Aisha was a successful R&B artist. Between their two credit cards, they'd apparently cleaned out everything Pier One and Bed, Bath, and Beyond had to offer regarding household goods. Admittedly, unlike most bachelors, Tommy was painfully neat – unless his lab or office was involved – but he also believed that five towels and one set of spare sheets was all a person needed for absolute comfort. Armed with about a dozen bags, Erica lugged them back up the stairs, and restocked the closet in his bedroom. Tommy still hadn't come out of the bathroom. As soon as she was finished she went in to investigate, only to find a dark and empty room._  
_

Checking the shower just to be sure, Erica dashed back into the bedroom. Looking about frantically, she forced herself to think logically. If the front door had been unlocked, Kimberly would have woken her, and as far as she knew the place was secure. Thinking fast, she peered out the door down the hall. The Room was still locked, but that was crazy, he'd never go in there. Panicking, she started digging for her cell phone when she saw something move through the blinds. Running over, she yanked the cord, and swore. Tommy was sitting out on the deck, wrapped in a comforter, and staring blankly into the sky. Resisting the urge to strangle him, she jerked open the door, and strode towards him.

"What are you doing out here?" Stepping around a large pile of rolled roofing, she knelt in front of him, and felt his forehead. He was cool to the touch, but she didn't know if that was from sitting outside, or the medication. Slowly, he turned his head to look at her. There was dried blood on his upper lip, in his hair, and on the back of the hand holding the comforter shut. Combing her fingers through the matted black spikes, she licked her thumb, and cleaned the brown trail off of his face. "Did you have a nightmare?"

"Yeah," he said softly, still staring into the woods. "I dreamt that someone was trying to take me."

"Probably a dark dimension flashback," said Erica, tucking the comforter around him. "Come on, we need to go inside. Last then we need is you getting a chill."

"Erica, something happened to me." Opening the comforter, Erica felt her blood freeze as she got a good look at her brother's body. The majority of his weight was gone, along with his skin which looked brand new. Running her fingers along the curve of his ribs, she felt for the familiar pad of heavy scar tissue. It was gone, right along with everything else. Frowning, she looked down at her fingertips, and noticed they were covered with a filmy substance. It was ink, Erica noticing that the familiar designs looked brand new, and some were even healing as if they were brand new. Licking her lips, she looked up at Tommy who was clearly shaken. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out this had something to do with his stint in the van. Folding the comforter back around him, she took a deep breath, and pulled out her cell phone.

"We are going back to the hospital," she said, punching in Jason's number. "And we are getting to the bottom of this. Are you in any pain?"

"No. Erica, I don't remember coming out here." Resisting the urge to panic, the elder Oliver hung up on the voice mail greeting, and switched to texting.

"It's okay, we'll figure it out." Shoving the phone into her pocket, Erica managed to get him to his feet, and back inside the house. Dumping him on the bed, she dug out some clothes, and hurriedly got him dressed. Fishing in the dresser for some socks, she noticed he was staring intently at the bookcase built into the wall facing the foot of his bed. Coming around the corner, she scanned the area to see what he was looking at. "What?" What her brother said next chilled her to the bone.

"Erica, I can _see_."


	11. Chapter 11

Title: In the Path of the Skin-Walker

Author: RedMyst

Rating: M

Spoilers: MMPR and MMPR: DT

Summary: After accepting a position at a prestigious university, Dr. Thomas Oliver finds himself unraveling a dark secret about his family's history involving the supernatural, and the Navajo nation.

Disclaimer: I don't own them.

Author's Note: And we're back! If you were wondering where my Beta and I went, in the real world, I graduated from college with my BA, got accepted into the program for my MA, and then spent some time with friends and family. Not to mention hammering out some great new ideas for the MMPR alternate universe we're creating. This chapter contains some huge reveals and story arcs. I finally saw an episode of MMPR: MEGAFORCE, and that opening scene with Troy's dream provided a great starting point for the next series of events. Death to writer's block! We went with Alison Mack (Smallville) for the mysterious woman in Billy's dream! Remember – feed the feedback monster!

_August 26__th__, 2011_

_"Where...?"_

_William Cranston stared about at the high walls of what appeared to be an abandoned rock quarry. The last thing he remembered was going to bed, which meant he'd either been teleported to another planet, or that he was dreaming. The latter was more plausible, since teleporting always made his stomach drop, and at the moment, he felt perfectly fine as he gazed across the sparkling black landscape. He could tell he was off-world, thanks to the stunted, blue-foliaged bushes springing up from the outcroppings of rock and gravel. A pair of pale white moons hung low in the beige sky, and if the muddy white clouds were anything to go by then the sun – wherever it was – belonged to a special class of stars called blue dwarfs. They were just as hot at their yellow counterparts, but their worlds were always cold, barren, and seemingly lifeless unless one knew where to look. Only the hardiest of creatures survived their surfaces, and the same held true of any inhabitant or colonist._

_This place was the surest definition of 'hellhole' he'd seen in a long time, and that included Zedd's strongholds._

_ As far as the eye could see, there was glass. The entire planet was probably a dead mega-caldera. There were some worlds that were literally giant volcanoes in space. Most gave way to lush, biologically rich biospheres due to the high mineral content of the soil, but others were just plain weird. Apparently, this place was one of the oddballs, and yet it bore evidence of life. Aside from the bushes, there was a giant gear-like device sticking up from a deep crack in the rock. A u-shaped coupling held it in place, and a network of heavy cables disappeared into the breech. At first glance, one would think it was part of a machine. Evidence of mining was all around him, but in reality it was an antiquated generator. Just one unit could power an entire planet, indefinitely, by converting geothermal energy to electrical and mechanical. _

_This one was probably made over a hundred-thousand years ago, Billy recognizing it as piece of Ancient technology. The term was generic, referring to any number of races who were involved in the system-wide Great War that occurred around that era. When Dark Specter first rose to power, there was an immediate upheaval in the galactic community. Forty-five percent of the races who originally inhabited the Milky Way, were wiped out. Younger races were preyed upon, while the oldest and strongest were torn apart by civil war. Normally, Billy didn't think about these things, but as he wandered through the black desert they flowed through him. _

_Ambassador to Earth and Aquitar, he'd learned of the history from the Council of Light. They kept meticulous records, and he knew that after the last major internal insurrections, they were formed by the surviving Ancients who then entrusted it to their various descendants. This wasn't done over eons, but in the span of a century, and then they were gone. No one knew if they died out, or what, but in the meantime the galaxy had slowly repopulated itself. There were over five million races, in various stages of development living in Earth's native galaxy, and of those several-hundred thousand of them could be classified as humanoid. _

_"Does that surprise you...?" Billy paused as the thought whispered across the back of his mind. Despite the hot stillness of the desert air, he felt cold, and the skin on the back of his neck rose into gooseflesh. After years of dodging putties, he knew when he was being watched, but whatever it was preferred to stay in the background. Unnerved, he continued picking his way across the volcanic riverbed that originally formed the great chasm. He could see deep lines, almost like scars, marring the heavy bedrock. Because of his ranger experience, he could tell they were made by focused blasts of energy – particle weapons, and the melted pools of sand confirmed it. In the back of his mind, a word formed, or rather a name – Tirmago. It meant something, but its significance was lost. The name was as alien to him as the land, but it was familiar, and the sense of being watched caught up to him as he surveyed the waste._

_This was beyond weird. Here he was, lying in bed in Tucson, having a lucid dream about roaming around on some chunk of black rock. "If I know I'm dreaming, then logically I should wake up." Except he didn't, causing his nocturnal abduction theory to come rushing back. "No, that's stupid." Billy was a scientist. When a scientist had a question he couldn't answer, he performed experiments, and conducted research until he could. Relying on his senses, he mentally took notes while continuing on his way. If he was just dreaming, then he would probably wake up the minute he reached the conclusion. Since he started the whole thing by heading north, he decided to continue in that direction.  
_

_Looking about, he could tell that before it became a battlefield, the canyon had indeed been a quarry. Massive pillars of carefully hewn stone lay scattered about, carved into a variety of basic geometric shapes. He didn't need a scanner to know that the enormous slabs, polished to a mirror-like finish, and ranging in size from the size of his hand to the megazord – were made of pure obsidian. There was something significant about that too, but all he could focus on was the eerie feeling that came with abandoned places. Specifically, places that were abandoned because some unspeakable horror had transpired, and burns from ancient artillery could only mean one thing._

_Climbing over one of the stone slabs, Billy noticed something sticking up out of the dark sand. Scrabbling down, he pulled up short when a quick brush of his hand revealed the morbid grin of a human skull. Startled, he drew back. That was the last thing he expected to see, and so curiosity won out over fear. Stooping, Billy plucked the oblong sphere from its grainy tomb. The skull was cracked from forehead to base, with a deep indentation above the right eye. The entire rib cage was crushed, the arms and legs pulled in, and the hands gripped into a macabre prayer. Up close, the former ranger could see that the canines were pointed. A quick tug revealed that in life they were retractable, and the skeletal surface was marred with deep groves that made it look as though it was braided. _

_This wasn't the body of a human, but of a Shaa'drick._

_A quick examination of the unusually long spine, multi-jointed limbs, and hyper-flexible feet confirmed it. Natural shape-shifters, it explained the unusual surface of the bleached bones. If the being were alive, a combination of adrenaline, key neurotransmitters, and hormones would render them malleable. An adult Shaa'drick could change its size, its shape, and even the texture and composition of its skin to avoid detection. Because of the incredible regenerative powers their unusual physiology afforded them, they were notoriously hard, but not impossible to kill._

_Reburying the skull, Billy rose to his feet, and looked around. Wherever he was, it was dead, and whoever owned the bones died in mortal terror. The body next to the one he uncovered lay with one arm still flung over its face in an attempt to protect itself from whomever or whatever had slaughtered them. Yes, there were dozens, if not hundreds of corpses scattered about the mine. It was clear. from the way they were laid out, that they were fleeing when something overtook them. A sudden blast of terror made him suck in air through his teeth, images of orange and ruby fire burning the beige sky.  
_

_"The Battle of Tirmago..." A part of him, despite the dreamlike state, knew this wasn't an ordinary trip. No, this was someone manipulating him in his sleep, but who, and for what purpose? His only answer was an urge to keep going, so he continued down the ravine, searching for additional clues. That name, he had to remember that name. Somewhere, in the core of his consciousness he knew it was related to Tommy, and the new Mega Force team. They had formed little under a month ago. Their leader was Gosei, a contemporary of Zordon, and Earth's new Guardian. Originally, there were two. _

_The latter was called Shebana, but little else was known other than her sex, and that she was the Council representative of a member world. Who, what, or where that planet was did not exist on official records. Information about her race was missing, and despite a five-thousand year absence no one believed she was dead. The only one who knew her intimately, was Zordon, and the only rangers who could confirm this was the original teams. Yet, they didn't even know what she looked like. Zordon had assured each of them, all the way through Turbo and Space, that they had met her at least once, but she would only reveal her presence when the Aeon powers were discovered. Unfortunately, the only one who knew how to find them was Zordon, and according to Andros he was dead.  
_

_After all, he was the one who shattered his tube, but the first teams doubted it. Zordon said that he had to physically go to the world where they were hidden in order to retrieve them, and to their knowledge the Eltarian had never lied. Even in his sleep, Billy could feel that intangible something that told him that their leader wasn't completely gone. If Zordon said they needed him to unlock Aeon, then they needed him. Right now, they didn't, and so Gosei was on the job. Due to the situation with the Inner Circle, they had to leave Tommy out of the loop on that one, but as soon as it was over they would bring him in. Billy had a gut feeling that their lives were about to get a lot more complicated, and that Earth would no longer be able to refrain from intergalactic politics. _

_Humans knew they weren't alone, that had shut down a lot of the old quarrels regarding religion and culture. Some of the old squabbles were still there, along with several new ones such as whether humans should trust their non-human allies, or accept their assistance through advanced medical technology. That was part of the reason he was back on Earth, the most powerful countries were negotiating to create a world government, and this worried the colonist populations. On top of being a hotbed of intergalactic intrigue, Earth was also a penal colony for Dark Specter dissidents, and refugees from the various wars. They wanted representation. After all, they had lived there for hundreds if not thousands of generations, and were just as aboriginal as humans. This posed a problem since a lot of those hidden nations had contributed in some way to humanity's advancement, and taking a page from their host species' playbook they demanded compensation. It never ceased to amaze him how some of the most advanced races gave in to baser instincts whenever their own self-interests were involved._

_Scrambling up an impossibly steep slab that blocked the narrow mouth of the canyon, Billy froze as a long shadow fell across his path. Looking up, he found himself staring into the piercing blue eyes of a young blonde woman – a Shaa'drick woman. He knew she was a member of the race whose bones littered the canyon, because he'd met others during his travels. They lived everywhere, from icy wastes, to deserts so hot the Sahara seemed cool by comparison. Their ancestors had helped found the Council of Light, but after the Great War which drove them to the brink of extinction, they had all but vanished. Their descendants colonized, then disappeared into the background of their adoptive worlds. Yet, after the seeming death of Zordon, and the return of Inquiris and Lenarn from their self-imposed exile – the Shaa'drick had risen._

_Crouched in front of the pale young woman, whose eyes seemed to bore into him, he knew one of them was close by. After all, Earth was another of their adoptive home worlds, and he knew from first-hand experience that they were excellent short-range telepaths. They were more than capable of invading a person's dreams, and if that was the case why? Billy could tell she wasn't one of the ones who had helped them treat Tommy. If that were so, Marie Oliver wouldn't have been so damned unhappy, but since Nancy was an Outlander they couldn't take the chance._

"_Outlander…?" Her voice trickled through his thoughts like water touched with ice. This was the face of the one invading his mind, bold in that she appeared in her true form, instead of as another human. Yes, she was an Outlander, a Shaa'drick who adopted a culture opposite of their technocratic brethren. His summation pleased her, which was good, since a well-versed Dreamwalker could kill their target in their sleep. Smirking, she pushed her hair out of her face. _

_"Only eaters of rot kill like that." She was referring to a Dark Shaa'drick, or what the Navajo called a Skinwalker. The malevolent form of their species were creatures born from nightmares. It took a conscious act of will to push the memories back down in the hole where he kept them. There were somethings humans just weren't meant to see, he believed that now, and he also believed that there were such things as demons. After all, he'd seen one when he was seventeen years old. _

_Stepping closer, Billy could see she was dressed in a black jacket. A brightly printed white shirt peeked out from underneath, while the lapels were adorned with a series strange symbols in neat rows of three. Black tights covered the slim legs sticking out from beneath the short blue skirt, and the strap of a green pack was slung across her chest. Fingerless gloves covered her hands, and sturdy boots housed her slender feet. For him to see her in such detail meant she was definitely close by, and trying to blend in. She looked as though she were in her mid to late twenties, although given their multi-centennial life spans, there was a good chance she was far older. Her racial heritage was betrayed by the thick dark lines that functioned as brows, and the red and black hues that accentuated her eyes and lips. In a word, she was beautiful. Possessing the slim, wiry build characteristic of her species, she picked her way down the gravel slope, and headed into a dying forest._

"_Follow…"_

_Pursuing the agile shape-shifter, he wondered why she was showing him her true nature. Normally, they tried to conform as much as possible, especially when around host species unused to the idea of alien life. Even though some of the other colonists had come forward, the Earth's Shaa'drick population preferred to wait in the shadows. Carefully observing the situation to see which way the political winds would blow, and letting their neighbors be the guinea pigs._

"_You can't blame us, you kill each other for sport." For some reason she had stopped, her bright blue eyes peering down into the quarry. Billy could feel power emanating from her body, and hear the air crack with static. When threatened, their species relied on an incredible inborn defense system. Like the eel, they evolved the ability to project a bioelectric field. The difference was that they could control it to a high degree of accuracy, meaning they could either stun a pursuer, or kill them outright. In that instant, some of the burn marks in the canyon made sense._

_Tirmago was the scene of a battle between the Ancients, the progenitors of their race. They were the ones who scarred the rocks, but the pools of molten glass, and ruined pillars were her ancestors. The descendant Shaa'drick colony had been wiped out, killed by something that completely overran them. It was then Billy noticed the wind, still before, now blowing with unparalleled ferocity. In its howl he could hear something mechanical, a deep thrum that forced him to look up, and witness the first wave of an armada. Ships, dark black, and of strange design invaded the beige sky. On the ground was a carpet, a living carpet of gray, and as he peered down Billy realized he was witnessing the march of an alien infantry._

"_Remember," said the girl, her blue eyes bored into his. "Beware the eaters of rot, for they are the devourers of worlds."_

_Stepping aside, she let Billy come forward so he could see what was going on. The army had stopped, squared off against every ranger team that ever existed. They were hard to make out, but Billy could see long faces, with three rows of eyes, with the top two glowing red, and the bottom four a jet black. They had two arms, two legs, and a variety of basic weapons at their disposal. Their air support hovered menacingly, and for a minute nobody moved. Then, as if on cue, the rangers plunged into the wall of alien footsoldiers. Billy knew this was a last-stand battle, and it all hinged on- _

_The original blue ranger jerked as Florida surrounded him. He was back on the porch, taking a pee over the side while Adam puked on himself in the living room. He could hear Rocky cursing, while Jason went upstairs to get some towels. It was 1996, that fateful night when everything started, no thanks to the Inner Circle. After a terrific fight with his older brother David, Tommy had disappeared. For two days, no one saw or heard from him, Erica driving back his pickup truck after it was found abandoned at a 7-11. The keys were still in the ignition, which meant he was probably close by. They were in a rural area, meaning lots of dense brush and tangled forest. It wasn't uncommon for him to retreat into the woods when pissed off, and needing solitude. He knew how to survive, so no one was worried, and Zordon hadn't sounded the alarm. _

_They were halfway through the third night when Jason got a call, it was Tommy. After everything went down, he filled in the others. When he picked up the red Zeo ranger, he looked as if he'd been in a fight. The Machine Empire was breathing down their necks at the time, so he figured he'd run aground of some drones. Yet, in hindsight it was clear it was something more. Tommy was shaking, in borderline shock, and when they arrived at the house he spent hours scrubbing himself in the shower. When he finally got out, he drank Adam under the table. Normally, he was a lightweight, only Erica had any kind of real tolerance for alcohol, but that night he downed vodka and tequila like it was water._

_Knowing what they did to him, what that one did when they had him in captivity, put his behavior in context. However, at the time it looked like he had a bad run-in with the gear heads, and wanted to forget about it by getting trashed. No one was clear on what happened next, but that thing – that terrible thing that was done to their teammate came to the fore. He could hear Kat shrieking while a commotion broke out upstairs. Glass exploded out of every window on the second floor, the air ripped by inhuman howls as some__**thing**__ broke loose in the back bedroom. Rocky was getting to his feet, Zack moving to put down his beer when Jason exploded into the hallway, and pounded down the stairs._

"_Get your ass up here!" He was yelling at Erica. The part-time ranger ran up the stairs, her candy-red hair whipping around her face as she kicked Kat out of her way. Swearing, Billy yanked on the sliding glass door. Kimberly was running down the stairs, beer spattering across her front as Rocky jumped out of the way. Adam, now sober, was screaming for Zack who stood gaping upwards. Tommy was standing at the head of the stairs, his tanned face unusually placid as he peered down at his friends. The howling had stopped, the red Zeo ranger's lips curling into a chilling smile._

_That was the moment when Billy knew something was wrong. Specifically, it was the moment when he realized that something was controlling the teen, as evidenced by his eyes which were completely black. Turning, he looked down at Kat who was cowering next to the bottom step. From behind him a shadow loomed up from the darkness, coalescing into something that his mind couldn't see. Not because he had closed his eyes, but because it was too horrible to witness. In the darkness, he could hear Erica shouting along with David, and then the sharp crack of a gun._

"_She shot it with a shotgun." The girl was back, watching the scene unfold from the far corner of the living room. Billy could hear Erica pump a new shell in the chamber, and re-cock the weapon. Yes she had, twice, in order to get it away from her brother. She still had it, shipped it down as soon as they made the plan, and had it loaded and ready in case Florida repeated itself. "Advise her to use an amalgam of silver and mercury. It disintegrates the tissue around the wound." The gun fired a second time. Scrambling, Billy jerked up his fly, and froze. There were eyes, dozens of them, peering out of the wilderness. Not a big deal, unless you ignored the fact they were all coal-red._

"_Dark Shaa'drick…" The glass exploded out of the windows on the first story, arcs of energy flashing in the background as he was thrown to the deck with enough force to knock him out. The blackness spared him of much of the horrors that night, both sides mistaking him as an instant casualty until the conflict was well over. It spared him now, the original blue ranger sitting bolt upright in bed. He was covered in sweat, his sheets wet, and tangled around his thin legs. Kicking angrily at the twisted bolts of cloth, he slumped back against his pillows, and scrubbed his face with his hands. He was in the upstairs unit of the duplex Kimberly shared with Adam, Aisha, and Eugene Skullovitch. Billy had no idea how that happened, but Bulk had decided to relocate their restaurant's headquarters to Tucson. They now operated in one of the hottest locations in the desert community, Tanya was the real estate agent who helped them close the deal on the property. They were the reason why the other rangers knew of Tommy's plans, long before Jason was able to confirm them._

_The younger Oliver told his sister that he was going to renovate their family house, and that he'd gotten the job at the university. Since Skull was her business partner and manager, it didn't take much to put two-and-two together. At the time, there was no way any of them could have gotten near Tommy to confirm since the Circle had started tailing former rangers. Thankfully, the man was a total klutz, and managed to tangle himself up in the cord for his nail gun while repairing a leak in the roof of his house. The black Dino Ranger's fall had been a pivotal moment in their scheme, and it was still paying off._

_Downstairs, he could hear Skull's reedy voice through the floor. Apparently he was up, and bouncing off the walls judging by the sound. Despite being a total spaz, the punk rocker was a closet neat-freak, and still had a soft spot for the pink ranger. Although, that crush had matured into a deep friendship which was on the same level of mindfuck as her relationship with her ex-boyfriend's delinquent older sister. As a teenager, Erica Marie Oliver was a hellion. Not to close family and friends, but definitely to the citizens of Angel Grove. The first time they met her, she punted Jason down the hall of Angel Grove High School like a football. Literally.  
_

_It was right after Jason decided to let Tommy onto the team, unofficially, since he wanted to 'feel him out first'. In reality, Jason didn't like him. This was the same kid who broke into their Zord, punched Trini, and kneed him right in the balls. Not to mention the kidnapping, torture, and the whole being a total dickwad to Kim. That last one was the bulk of why after seeing the pink ranger storm off in tears, following a heated conversation with the green ranger, Jason ran him down while they were playing football. At first, everyone thought he was just tackling him, until he started punching him in the face. Zack, Billy, and a couple of the guys managed to pull him off, but not before he'd manage to bloody the other teen's nose. Superhero or not, Tommy was thirteen years old, and did what any other thirteen year old boy would do when the kid who claimed to be his new best friend beat him up._

_He ran home crying, and told his sister._

_Erica was two years older, two inches taller, and had twice the reputation of Bulk and Skull. Like Tommy, she'd been in karate since she was six, and when Jason turned the corner in order to go into the boys shower at the gym he was greeted by a fist. At first Zack and Billy had thought it was a Rita because of the voice, but then they saw the beat-up Doc Martens, and ragged plaid skirt. Erica jerked Jason clean off the floor, and held him against the wall with one hand. _

_"Listen you little shit," The red ranger made a strained keening sound as she tightened her grip. "I don't appreciate having to clean dried blood off my little brother's face because you want to be some kind of alpha he-man." _

_"Wh...a...aa...t?" Erica thumped him against the wall, hard.  
_

_"I am his sister. We have the same parents. We have the same DNA. We were adopted by the same two rich gringos who wanted more kids." Jason wheezed as she thumped him again. "Which means if you ever, and I mean ever touch him like that again I will beat you until your eyes bleed." Terrified, the younger teen nodded dumbly. The red ranger sliding down the wall with a rubbery squeak as Erica stalked off, muttering. _

_It was hard to believe that this was the same woman who was Kim's best girlfriend, and the reason why they were both friends with Skull. It boggled his mind. Originally, Skull had lived with Bulk, but after the other ex-bully's daughter was born they finally cut their umbilical cord. Although, not by much since Bulk lived just two streets over in the other cul-de-sac. Rubbing his hands over his bald head, he glanced over at the nightstand as his cell phone began vibrating. He knew, without looking at the screen, that it was just after dawn. The sky was turning a bright pink, and the top of the mountains were beginning to glow a brilliant gold. Downstairs, he could hear Kim moving around, talking excitedly to Skull who went out, and started her car. Adam and Aisha were getting dressed, the latter pounding on his bedroom door._

"_No time to explain, just get dressed, and pick up the call from Jason." Billy didn't have to be a genius to know it involved Tommy. Climbing out of bed, he picked up the phone, and grabbed his pants from where he'd tossed them on the floor._

"_What's happened?"_

"_Just get to the hospital as quick as possible."_

"_Is he all right?"_

_"I'm not sure."  
_

_"What do you mean?" Billy felt his stomach drop. He just knew by the tone of the other man's voice that it was serious. "Is he having complications?"_

_"No, nothing that serious, but...Billy he's lost over forty pounds."_

_"What?" Jason had been whispering, so it probably didn't help that he was screaming into the phone. "Are you sure?"_

_"I ran the tests myself, it's as if his whole body just fixed itself, overnight."_

_"I thought that wasn't possible?"_

_"Only if the infection was active, since it's dormant, it kicked his immune system into overdrive. Billy, he has no scars. His skin is brand new, literally, and the same for his eyes. I did three MRIs, there is no sign of damage."  
_

_"What about his leg?"_

_"Inflamed. Right now, that's the only thing that's medically wrong with him."_

_"How is he taking it?" Billy shoved his feet into his shoes, and rummaged around for his glasses. It was anyone's guess how they were going to explain this one, knowing Jason he'd probably make it up as he went along, but in the meantime damage control was their top priority._

_"Not well, Kim is going to sit with him."_

_"Are you sure that's a good idea?"  
_

_"You have a better one?"_

_"No," Billy grabbed his wallet out of the nightstand drawer. _"_It gets worse, I talked to Hayley earlier, and the Dino Rangers are on their way."_

"_What? Who contacted them?" Jason's voice was shrill, the physician temporarily drowned out by a loud cracking sound. Apparently he had the phone in a chokehold. "Was it Justin? I'll kill him!"_

"_No, Justin is still at MIT. They heard about it on the news. Tommy tasked them with driving down his other vehicles, Red Lightning included, and its streaming all over the place that the brother of Joy Society's lead singer is in the hospital."_

"_Shit, I know how those kids are about him. Unless we kill them, and bury their bodies in shallow graves with rusty shovels we're not getting them out of Tucson."_

"_I know t__hey all transferred over to Macalester University, two of the boys are in his Freshman anthropology class, and there is no way the school is going to give up the opportunity to have Connor McKnight on their soccer team. If anything, they just saved the man's job a thousand times over."_

"_What are you going to do?"_

"_I'm going to take them over to the house, and keep them there. Tommy's remodeling the place. I don't know a kid who wouldn't like slugging holes in the walls of his science teacher's house."_

"_Have you told this to Tommy?"_

"_Should I?" There was a long pause as Jason thought about it._

"_I want to debrief them, tell them everything that's going on, as soon as THIS sinks in."_

"_Zack and Rocky –"_

"_Can kiss my golden ass, I've met these kids. Tommy is their Zordon, I'd rather have them fighting with us then against us. The girl is already halfway clued on about him, I've seen how she handles herself, and if we get her in line it'll work. The same for Connor, the kid might act like a jackass, but he can handle himself in a tight situation."_

_"I don't know, I'd rather call in Ninja Storm."_

_"Hell-plus-no. One thing I've learned about folks with evil twins, is that they always come back, and the last thing we need is Lothor on the loose."_

_"I thought Mesogog destroyed him?" The long pause told Billy everything he needed to know. "O-kay, Dino Thunder it is."  
_

_"I'll see you when you get here." Clicking shut the phone, Billy found himself thinking about his dream. A Shaa'drick had visited him, with images of a vision first reported by the red Mega Force ranger. Gosei had shared it with the Council, who were now trying to discover what it meant. Apparently, they weren't the only ones searching, The Outlander was proof of that, but in return she had given them a valuable clue. Whoever or whatever that mysterious alien force was, it was connected to the Inner Circle, the Dark Shaa'drick, and because of his relationship to The Power he knew that the outcome of that vision hinged on one thing-_

_ Keeping Tommy and Erica Oliver alive._


	12. Chapter 12

Title: In the Path of the Skin-Walker

Author: RedMyst

Rating: M

Spoilers: MMPR and MMPR: DT

Summary: After accepting a position at a prestigious university, Dr. Thomas Oliver finds himself unraveling a dark secret about his family's history involving the supernatural, and the Navajo nation.

Disclaimer: I don't own them.

Author's Note: This is a long post, but it'll set the pace for where we're going next. Major story arcs and revelations, and all I will say is that isn't even a quarter of it. Allison Mack is back as the mysterious Shaa'drick woman at the end of this chapter. As always, feed the feedback monster.

_August 27__th__, 2011_

"_Tell me, have you ever hunted a man?" _The words of Randall Ray Soames drifted through Special Agent Zack Taylor's memory. The former ranger was sitting on his back porch, nursing a bottle of Jack, and a thick cigar. It was a ritual employed by any member of law enforcement, and it was damn near habit for anyone working in the Violent Crimes Division – his specialty. Watching the first rays of sun peek over the ridge, he glanced over at his cell phone. The black Nokia was silent, a minute ago it had beeped, letting him know he had a text from Jason. Tommy was back in the hospital, suffering complications from exposure, and something akin to a heart-attack. Somehow, he'd managed to wander half-naked out of his house, and pass out on his patio. It sounded like the sort of thing he would do, except when Erica found him, the doors were locked from the inside. Unless the man had regained the ability to teleport, the catches probably dropped when the door banged shut. They were the old-fashioned kind where you had to slide up the catch, and pull the pin out of the brass casing in the floor using a lever.

It was the sort of get-up you'd expect to find in Tommy's house, but Jason wasn't taking any chances. Billy, using his connections, had ordered state-of-the-art surveillance equipment, and would have it installed before the day was out. Not only that, they had a new problem on their hands. Right when Erica was hustling Tommy into the back of her car, the Dino Rangers turned up. She'd called Rocky to help her get her brother to the hospital, and instead the idiot caused a scene that resulted in Tommy having a fit. Zack didn't need to be there to know what kind of reaction the younger man had when Rocky started bullying his kids. Unfortunately, his body couldn't take the stress, not after shedding nearly forty pounds overnight, and he collapsed. According to Aisha, the attack resembled a seizure, and because of the memory blocks Tommy didn't understand what was happening to him. The EMTs hauled away a screaming, terrified mess of a man, and left four shocked and confused teens in their wake.

"_Thank you DeSantos_", groused Zack, as he worked at his cigar. Before, they could have distracted and dismissed them, but now they _had_ to debrief them no thanks to that jackass. During his conversation with Jason, he made his feelings on the Dino Ranger's involvement clear. There were things about Tommy and Erica they didn't know, things about their family, and that included both their natural and adoptive ones. It was one thing to tell them their leader's most trusted friends, people close enough that he considered them family, were the ones who drugged and kidnapped him. It was another to tell them that the reason was a parasite lodged in the back of his skull, and that his life had been hanging by a thread for the last fifteen years.

Zack tapped off the end of the stogie, and glanced over at the small pile of yellowed files perched in the middle of his patio table. The start of this mess lay in their curling pages, part of the case he was currently working. Exactly three weeks ago, a college student was found dead in her locked dorm room. The twenty-one year old completely dismembered by an unseen, yet powerful force that pulled her body apart. There was no sign of forced entry, the victim asleep when the perpetrator attacked, and the only route of escape lay in a window some thirty feet off the ground. To top it off, it was locked from the inside.

One week later, sixty-one year old Manuel Rodriguez, the man employed by Tommy's family to oversee his biological family's estate, was found dead in the same manner. The caretaker sealed inside of his pickup truck, investigators unable to figure out how whatever killed him had gotten inside. The week after that, Pat Cochran was found scattered across half of his firm's parking lot. The FBI had been called in to investigate, Zack selected because of his expertise in cases involving the occult and hyper-normal phenomena. The latter was reference to his stint as a power ranger. Under presidential order, the Department of Defense had identified all members of the unmasked teams. Government contracts were the reason why Tommy and Billy were multi-millionaires before they were halfway through their twenties, and the same was true for Zack.

His Above Top Secret clearance gave him access to the yellowed records sitting on his patio table, and a look into the final eight weeks of Nancy Red Eagle's life. The aging files were all that remained of her investigation into the Red Coyote Murders in '84. The others had disappeared out of the Tucson Police Department's evidence lockers less than a week after the detective's death. Federal officials had seized what was left, and placed them in the FBI archives. Already familiar with the basics, courtesy of Tommy and Erica, it didn't take long for Zack to put two-and-two together. At the moment, his superiors were treating the situation as the work of a copycat killer, but he knew better.

After what happened in Florida, he knew they were dealing with the Inner Circle. True, he couldn't prove it, not yet anyway. At the moment they were just a random phrase jotted down in the corner margins of Nancy's case notes. Unfortunately, the further he dug, the closer he got, and the closer he got the shorter his expected life span. Personally, he wanted to go to the Shaa'drick. Not the ones Jason had scared up to treat Tommy's infection, but the Outlanders. Fifteen years hadn't dulled his memory of that night, and neither had the liquor. It was only a matter of time before the Inner Circle tried to strike, which meant they needed all the help they could get. Zordon had carefully instructed them to seek out the Outlanders once Tommy was treated, but he didn't tell them how. Even their urban cousins didn't know how to get a hold of them, and it pissed Zack off.

Only an Outlander knew how to find another Outlander, and Zordon had blocked that knowledge from both of siblings. Jason might be content to stick to a holding pattern, until the situation demanded otherwise, but Zack wasn't. His discontentment with both the case and the way the other rangers were handling the situation was the reason why he'd been awake the entire night. Drinking and spending quality time with the serial killer who made his career was an easy way to distract his mind.

Toying with the edge of his badge, he ran his finger around the metallic border. A degree in Criminal Psychology from Kent State, Zack was recruited straight out of college by the FBI. When he graduated from Quantico, the FBI training academy, he spearheaded the investigation that led to the arrest and conviction of Ahmed Ali. The former drug dealer was currently sitting in San Quentin, and would be there for the next twenty years. When they raided his house in Beverly Hills, they found over five-hundred pounds of coke and enough weapons for a small army. Bringing down some of the most dangerous arms and drug dealers on the West Coast made him a name, and their convictions gave him a reputation. When he transferred from Narcotics to Violent Crimes, he was assigned the Barbie Killer case.

At first glance, the name looked and sounded stupid, but Zack had come to learn that murder cases with innocuous names featured horrors inconceivable to the average mind. Then again, these weren't average minds, and that applied to criminal and cop alike. Running that through his thoughts, Zack took another pull from the bottle. When he first looked in that folder, his whole body went cold. It was hard to believe that the genteel man he'd sent to Death Row was the same one who sodomized and murdered fifteen little girls. He earned his nickname because of his habit of dressing them up like the doll, and going so far as to sew their faces into her trademark wide-eyed grin.

Yet Soames, who exuded a Zen-like calm, was a sixty-one year old grandfather, church deacon, and retired county sheriff. He was the last person anyone would have ever suspected, _he was one of them_, yet that was the angle Zack had worked. The killer would have to be someone afforded the benefit of the doubt, with standing in their community. The methodical way in which each crime scene was cleaned, indicated someone familiar with standard forensic procedures. Although, there was one thing Soames had overlooked, right along with previous investigators – the victims' clothing.

Zack, following a hunch, had each of the delicate dresses researched, and traced them back to a single shop in Amarillo, Texas – Soames' hometown. Candy's Tot Spot had been in business for more than forty years, and each owner had kept meticulous records. Although each outfit was purchased with cash, the latest owner had taken her record-keeping one step further, and installed a video camera. There was Soames, buying the very dress the last victim was found wearing. According to the time stamp, the transaction happened two days before the ME figured the girl was killed, and it coincided with Soames taking a fishing trip out of town.

It was downhill from there for the former law enforcement officer. On the day of his execution, Zack had visited him. It wasn't something he discussed, not even Tanya knew. He wanted to hear the man explain – in his own words – what caused him to go from hometown hero to a homicidal horror. It was something in the back of every law enforcement officer's mind, regardless of branch. The possibility that one day they would cross that line, and turn. It was the only thing Zack could think about, especially after Macalister, and Tommy.

He knew the relationship they shared with the Oliver siblings was unique, based on a deep intimacy that went beyond trust. Betraying him was the hardest thing they'd ever done, and Zack doubted he'd ever forgive them. Erica, maybe, but only because she was his last blood relative. Even though she was the one who coordinated it all, starting with the cover-up in Florida, and ending with their current mess. The minute Tommy started his interstate drive to Arizona, Erica had called Jason. Touching base with Hayley, who filled her in on his last-minute plans, she forwarded his itinerary, and made sure to book a flight on the night of the Purge. It wasn't uncommon for Erica to change her travel plans at the last minute, and the rise of Mega Force had caught everyone – including the Inner Circle – off guard.

Rendezvousing with their Shaa'drick contact, Jason started closing the trap the minute the black Dino ranger crossed the state line. Because she was a celebrity, Aisha was familiar with the various back streets leading in and out of Tucson. Zack had used that knowledge, coupled with satellite imagery, to ensure TJ had a clear getaway route. They had relied on Billy's techno-wizardry to manage the traffic light system, and Carlos to keep an eye on the satellite uplink into the grid. They had been planning this for years, waiting until the time was right when they could finally get what was left of that _thing_ out of him.

Last time it was a botch job. True, Jason's fast-thinking had saved Tommy's life that night, but anything less than 100% removal meant a 90% possibility of re-growth. David True Heart's death was no accident, and neither was the crash that nearly killed his younger brother. That _thing_ had caused Tommy to black out on his final lap in Daytona, and slam into the concrete retaining wall. Thankfully, when everything went down that night, they had Zordon at their back. It was the ancient Eltarian who blocked Tommy's memory, monitoring the re-growth, and taking steps to ensure the failure of any attempted possession or assassination. When the parasite tried to shred his brain in order to re-assert itself, it became vulnerable, and triggered the immunity Zordon and the Shaa'drick had hidden in the red Zeo ranger. As a result he'd survived, now they just needed to finish the job, and that bought him back to the Dinos.

Admittedly, he'd never met the kids, but Jason had. According to him the way they were with Tommy, was the way they had been with Zordon. After that scene in the driveway, there was no way in Hell they'd convince them to sit this out, not without telling them some version of the truth first. That part did little to reassure him. What version of the truth were they going to tell them? The one about what Tommy and his sister actually _were_? Or were they going to tell them the one featuring the half-dead brain-sucking parasite in the back of his skull? Whatever they told them, it would have to come packaged with some kind of hope. Nothing demoralized a team, like seeing their leader fall apart.

The two youngest boys, Ethan and Trent, were badly shaken. First, they were treated to Rocky howling at them like a crazed gorilla, and then they were front and center for their former science teacher completely losing his shit. Zack knew, from a previous conversation, that Tommy harbored strong paternal feelings for his young protégés, especially the girl. The minute she screwed up her face, it was over. Right now she and the other boy, Conner, were at the hospital. That deep sense of betrayal and dread gnawed at the pit of his stomach. Tipping the bottle, he drowned it with the fiery liquid.

When they saw him walking down the secluded trail, it was obvious, based on the far-off look on his face, that he was deep in thought. It was the perfect opportunity, probably the _only_ opportunity, and as soon as he was within a hundred yards of their position Jason gave the signal. TJ had stayed with the van, the motor running, and Kim hovering nearby for her part where she'd 'luckily' catch a glimpse of the speeding vehicle's tags. His heart pounding, in that moment he knew what Soames meant about hunting another human being. It came with a certain thrill, an intoxicating one, and it left him cold as the valley began to turn pink under the rising crest of the burning sun.

At the time, he'd written it off as a sense of self-righteous karma for all those times Tommy had knocked them flat on their asses while evil. That lie turned to ashes in his throat when Jason closed in for the kill, taking down their former leader by catching, and twisting his bad leg.

"_Yes, I have,"_ Zack just stared at the former sheriff, letting his words hover over the table in his mind's eye. Soames smiled, resting his hands on his sizeable belly.

"_I suppose you want me to give you a reason, some sort of explanation as to why I have become what I've become."_

"_Something like that."_

"_It's simple. I merely learned to see the world from a different perspective. Are you familiar with the Bible?"_

"_I used to be an altar boy."_

"_Good, then you have a cursory knowledge, at least from the times when you weren't sleeping. We're told we're made in God's image, and that God has power over life and death. Every day, we exercise this power, but most only appreciate the side that promotes life. They don't understand the one that embraces death, because they believe it is evil."_

"_You carved up fifteen little girls, and sewed their faces into masks."_

"_I can see where that would be evil, but as with everything God can make something good come out of it."_

"_And what would that be?"_

"_I understand now why people kill, and can give you your answer. People kill because they want to be God, they want to have the power over life and death, and they want that because they desire control. You have complete control when you kill someone, Agent Taylor, you alone determine just how and where they will live, and when and by what means they will die. You get to become both God and the Devil simultaneously, and that knowledge people give their very souls for."_

"_So what's my answer?"_

"_Your answer is that if you enjoy that sort of thing, the knowledge of Good and Evil where you can be both the Devil and God in an instant when you slit someone's throat, and watch them bleed in your arms. The look in their eyes as they realize, they aren't going to survive, and stare up at you wondering what purpose their death served. If you have no problem telling them that the purpose was for your pleasure, and yours' alone then perhaps we'll see each other again."_

Zack set the empty bottle on the table, and pounded out the cigar. Reaching out, he ran his fingers over the tattered edges of the yellowed files. Seeing Tommy vulnerable had bought out a deep, almost primal urge in him. Regardless of how things turned out between the two of them, he was committed to protecting, and keeping the younger man alive. When he started to remember what happened, especially that night in Florida, Zack would tell him the truth. In the meantime, he needed to figure out how to protect both his former teammates, and the people of Tucson. He needed to know what the Inner Circle's next move would be, and what to look for when tracking them.

Nancy Red Eagle had those answers, but someone had gone to great lengths to conceal them. Personnel records were also missing, down to the rosters, which meant Zack had no idea who was and was not on the force from 1980-1984. Right now he had the eggheads in Phoenix working on it, gut instinct told him that his first answers would be found there, but what he really needed was the original missing files. All of the victims, in some way, shape, or form could be traced back to Tommy and Erica's mother. There was something about the Red Coyote murders, something important, and Zack had a feeling that whoever removed that information did so in an attempt to preserve not conceal it. He knew that because when Tommy had started digging into this mess when he was sixteen, strange packages would turn up containing either pictures, or items from his youth. Someone out there was helping them, and whoever that someone was they were instrumental in contacting Zordon, and mobilizing the Outlanders to intervene that night when the Inner Circle tried to claim Tommy.

Taking a deep breath, Zack pulled a particularly thick file from under the stack, and carefully read the name – Red Eagle, N #009876-B. Opening the cover, he thumbed through the yellowed images, and laid them out on the table. The first was of Nancy, lying face-down in the middle of a charred circle, her left arm outstretched in front of her. There were two burn marks shaped like the soles of her shoes in the carpet behind her feet, and the next image showed that the walls and doors behind her were blackened from a burst of intense heat. Yet, there wasn't a sign of heat-related trauma anywhere on Nancy's body, and cause of death was cardiac arrest. The medical examiner had remarked in her case notes that, judging by the post-mortem expression on the detective's face, it appeared she died of fright.

Turned on her back, Zack could see her eyes were open, wide, and her mouth fixed in a silent scream. The blood vessels and capillaries on both sides of her face had ruptured, and there was deep bruising on each side of her chest. That was where normalcy ended, and high strangeness took over. The altar where Joseph performed his ritual was soaked in Tommy's blood, but when police found him there wasn't a scratch on him. Erica was stabbed almost thirty times, yet the EMTs remarked that her cuts 'were open, but wouldn't bleed'. Joseph Red Eagle's cause of death was listed as 'spontaneous human combustion', and the photos confirmed that he'd burned from the inside out. The rest of him was reduced to some kind of charred slurry. The walls were scarred by focused bursts of energy, and Nancy was determined to be their point of origin. Tommy and Erica both had sunburns, even though their nanny testified that their skin was fine when she left just two hours before the attack. All of the windows in the house had shattered, but the ones in the room remained intact.

The pictures got strange from there, to the point they became too disturbing to look at unless it was the middle of the day, with the sun high overhead. Closing the file, Zack tossed the empty bottle into the trash, belched, and jumped out of his skin.

Standing on the patio, was the girl from Billy's dream.


	13. Chapter 13

Title: In the Path of the Skin-Walker

Author: RedMyst

Rating: M

Spoilers: MMPR and MMPR: DT

Summary: After accepting a professorship at a prestigious university, Dr. Tommy Oliver finds himself back in the company of a former flame, and entangled in a conspiracy from his family's past.

Disclaimer: I don't own them.

Author's Note: The story arc we've all been waiting for, consider this chapter to be the season finale. Given its length, it would be the equivalent of a two-hour episode. Our goal is to wrap things up, and come back in the next installment of this series 'The Hidden World'. Remember, feed the feedback monster!

_August 28__th__, 2011_

"I still can't believe someone got the drop on Dr. O." Conner McKnight looked up from his cell phone, and over at Kira Ford. The red Dino ranger was busy bouncing back and forth between texting Erica and Hayley, and checking in with Ethan and Trent. The latter were back at the ranch, playing XBOX after helping Billy and TJ install a new security system on the remote property. After the run-in with Rocky, Conner had contacted the Aussie, and filled her in on the situation. Even though she had never worn the mystical spandex, her expertise in morphing technology made her a de facto leader, and after several heated calls to Jason, Zack, and Kim the senior rangers had agreed to meet with the Dino team. In the meantime, they were driving back in Adam's SUV after a last-minute supply run at the local Wal-Mart.

"You're telling me," said Kira. "The man has a sixth-degree black belt in Karate, and was taken down by a bunch of goons in black spandex and ski masks."

"I know, right? I'm telling you, this has 'bad guy' written all over it." Conner leaned forward, and popped his back. The younger man was stiff and sore after being used as a human heating pad by Kira. For the last two days, they had been at Tucson Medical Campus following Tommy's admission to the ICU. Stubborn to a fault, they had refused to leave, resulting in a stand-off until Jason had compromised by agreeing to let them stay until he was no longer critical. The physician going so far as to put them up in a private room, where Conner spent the next two nights fending off his teammate. "By the way, the next time we share a bed could you not practice your karate moves in your sleep?"

"I was being chased by tyrannodrones."

"Named Kylee Styles?"

"Weren't you saying something about 'bad guys'?"

"Yeah, I think this has something to do with Mega Force."

"You honestly think this involves the new guys?"

"Don't you? The same day Dr. O was kidnapped, we get this Admiral Malkor demanding our 'unconditional surrender'." Conner making quotation marks with his fingers. "Not only that, the dude leading this new team was some kind of student of Zordon, _the_ Zordon."

"You've got a point, the connection between Gosei and Zordon, and the timing of all this is fishy."

"Not really. It's been twenty years since Dark Specter and Zordon wiped each other out, plenty of time for the lackeys to rebuild." The insectoid race was one of the leftover worlds from the original Alliance of Evil, and had spent the last two decades gathering their forces. Their efforts aided by the former empires of Vile, Zedd, Rita, Divatox, Trakeena, and Mondo - galactic powers that the original rangers had defeated. There was no way it was all a coincidence.

"I've been on the grid," said Kira, referring to the private social network used by current and former ranger teams. "We're not the only ones thinking along these lines."

"I noticed, which explains why the others are trying to keep us out. Dr. O might not be the only target."

"You think we're on the list?"

"Maybe, after all, he _is_ our leader, and the aliens backing the Warstar all had their asses handed to them by the original teams. The same teams, mind you, that Dr. O was in charge of when he was a ranger."

"Ugh," Kira watched as a stream of cars sailed through the intersection in front of them. "I really, really wish we were partying in Phoenix right now." The two teens sat in silence for a bit, staring at the passing scenery as they left the main drag of the desert metropolis. Originally, the teens were headed to Tucson as part of an once-in-a-lifetime road trip.

Staying true to form, Tommy had forgotten to make arrangements to have his and Erica's personal vehicles delivered to their new home. Normally, it was the first thing he took care of, but it had slipped his mind, and by the time the paleontologist discovered his mistake it was too late. Even if he called in every favor imaginable, there wouldn't be a trailer ready in time, and he couldn't leave them in California since one of them just happened to be a Zord disguised as a hot rod. To make matters worse, Bulk and Skull had dropped in to discuss business the week of his departure. The two ex-bullies had a habit of nosing around the wrong place at the wrong time, and Skull had gotten way too close to Red Lightning for comfort. In a moment of temporary insanity, bought on by desperation and panic, he tasked the Dinos with making the drive.

Although the teens had commanded a thirty-foot battle droid, the former high school science teacher had serious reservations about giving them the keys. The vehicles held sentimental value for Tommy and Erica, and several of their closest friends. Between the two of them was a black 1969 Ford Mustang, a 1972 Dodge Charger painted a bright metallic green, the Red Lightning Turbozord, and Billy's Rad Bug. Being a little older and wiser, the four youths understood exactly what Tommy was entrusting them with. Despite the older man's fears, Conner, Kira, Ethan, and Trent had obeyed the speed limits, avoided using the Turbozord and Rad Bug's special features (mostly), and were having the time of their lives. The main focus of their trip was to make memories, good ones, and since it was probably the last time they would see each other they planned to make the most of it.

Everything was fine, until the night of their layover in Reno when at a quarter to midnight, they were roused by the ringing of their cell phones. It was Hayley, and by the sound of her voice, they knew something bad had happened. While walking across the grounds of the college where he worked, Tommy had been attacked by five masked men, and forcefully dragged into the back of a van. According to the older woman their former leader had been drugged, robbed, and then returned after a six-hour absence. Despite being reassured that the paleontologist was all right, they had gone to bed with the sick feeling that something was very wrong. The next day, every news feed on the planet was airing footage of the Mega Force rangers in action, and less than an hour after crossing the border into Arizona they heard about the murders in Tucson.

"Do you think what's happening here in Tucson is connected as well?" The yellow and red ranger watched as a police cruiser sailed through the intersection in front of them. Earlier, they had watched a solemn-faced Zack confirm the desert community's worst fears on the five o'clock news. A serial killer was on the loose, both the Tucson Police Department and FBI had expressed concerns about public safety, so the mayor had enacted a ten o'clock curfew to clear the streets. The goal was to make it harder for the killer to locate and target new victims, but in reality it put everyone on a time crunch. According to the clock on the dash, it was already seven o'clock, and it would be another hour before they reached the ranch. Checking his phone, Conner tapped the screen of the red Nokia, and pulled up his inbox. There was a new message from Erica, followed by one from Ethan, and another from Trent.

"Looks like they're waiting on us, Erica wants to know our ETA?" Kira coasted to a stop at a t-bar intersection, and read the DOT sign. Left was Sequoia, and at the end of that was a right-hand turn that became Mesa – the road that led to the Oliver ranch. Turning onto the long stretch of cooling asphalt, Kira glanced at the clock on the dash.

"Tell her we're just turning onto Sequoia."

"Will do." Sending the text, Conner pocketed his phone, and peered out at the darkening landscape. Despite popular belief, Arizona wasn't just desert wasteland, but rich forests, and fertile farmlands. The state was a myriad of climates and temperatures, capable of hosting deep snows in the north, and searing deserts in the south. It was a land of contrasts, mystery, and the hee-bee-jee-bees. There was something about the ranch that made the younger man feel uneasy. It wasn't as noticeable in the house, but on the outer reaches of the property it was almost overwhelming.

"Hey Kira, while we're talking about weirdness, you notice anything about where Dr. O and his sister are staying?"

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know, the fact that the place is creepy as all get out the minute the sun goes down?"

"Are you talking about in the house, or outside?"

"Both, I honestly don't understand how they can stay out there without getting the creeps."

"I know, right?"

"Reminds me of the stories Dr. O used to tell us where he could actually _feel_ when Rita or Zedd was watching him."

"I agree," said Kira. "There's something weird about that place. One thing I want to know is why their tribe sent them out to be adopted. Have you ever heard of ICWA?"

"No, what's that?"

"Indian Child Welfare Act, it was set up to right some wrongs the U.S. government did back in the old days."

"What happened?"

"There used to be laws where it was legal to steal the children of Native Americans, and adopt them out to non-Native families."

"Are you kidding me?"

"Nope, how do you think I got Sioux in my family?"

"Damn."

"Yep, so ICWA was created, and as a result Native Americans children must be offered to the tribe _first_, with outside only as a last resort. The guy who raised Dr. O's brother, the one who died-"

"David."

"Yeah, David, the guy who raised him was their mother's last living relative. Why didn't he take Tommy and Erica too?"

"I don't know, maybe he didn't have the money?"

"Conner, Dr. O is a multimillionaire, and so is Erica. That money didn't come from their adoptive family it came from their natural one."

"I thought it was both, and besides since when have you been so interested in Dr. O?"

"Since our science teacher attracts sick creepy weirdoes like magnets on a refrigerator, and moved onto a ranch covered in woo-woo sauce."

"You're right, and it doesn't help that he's got one foot in the grave. You saw what I saw, and it's obvious why those guys were able to take him down."

Jason had allowed the red and yellow Dino rangers to visit Tommy for a short five minutes, and what they saw shocked them. A heavy-duty brace ran from ankle to thigh on his left leg, and he was hooked to an EEG to monitor his brain activity. However, what gave them pause was his dramatic weight loss. By the time his metabolism settled out, Tommy had lost a grand total of sixty-two pounds. There were IVs running into both of his arms, and he was in a semi-comatose state. Jason had gone out of his way to reassure them that the older man was fine, but they weren't buying it, not after what happened two days ago.

"I don't want to go there, not yet."

"I don't think we have a choice, he had an episode."

"One episode –"

"Kira, the man has a brain tumor." An uncomfortable silence settled over the inside of the SUV. "He told us so himself, along with how much time he has left." Following the fall from the roof of his house, Tommy had experienced an attack similar to the one in his driveway. Once he had recovered, to the point of being coherent, he told them the truth.

There was a slow-growing mass on the back of his brain, located in the topmost portion of his spinal cord. Part of it had been removed when he was a teenager, but the rest was in an area that rendered it inoperable. It was the culprit behind his crash at Daytona. The tumor had pressed into his brainstem causing him to blackout, and hit the retaining wall on his final lap. When the NASCAR physicians got a look at his MRIs, his racing career was over.

"It can't be removed, it will continue to grow, albeit slowly, until it kills him.

"I said I don't want to go there," snapped Kira. "Right now, I just want to find who did this, and what we can do about it."

"What'll that do?"

"It'll give me something better to think about." Kira came to the end of Mesa, and turned onto the long winding trail that served as the ranch's driveway. Peering into the gloom that surrounded the ranch's long winding driveway, she worked her way down narrow track. The rains from the previous evening had worsened the ruts, making them deep with slick sides. For the most part, the SUV just bounced over them, but ever so often she had to fight to keep the vehicle out of the ditch. On the left-hand side was a canal that diverted excess rainwater into a dry riverbed, and in the glow of the headlights she could see hints of rushing brown water. That was the last place she wanted to go, and neither of them relished the thought of walking back to the house in the dark.

"To be honest, I have a feeling they're going to tell us to sit it out," groused Conner, breaking the now-oppressive silence. "Billy basically told us as much at the hospital."

While they were waiting to see Tommy, the ambassador had given them a rundown of the situation. Erica had already decided to bring them in, but Adam, Rocky, and Tanya were against it. Their science teacher's abduction involved a hyper-normal element that was extremely dangerous, and as a result, the others were reluctant to bring them in.

"I think they're scared that we're too inexperienced to handle ourselves, but come on. Mega Force is barely out of middle school, and they're taking on the Warstar. We've already worn the mystical spandex, and been on several missions off-world. I mean seriously what more do – HOLY SHIT!" Kira slammed on the breaks, the two teens jerked forward against their seat-belts as the vehicle skidded to a stop, and died. Surrounded by pitch blackness and silence, save the sound of ragged breaths, adrenaline quickly bought them around. Rubbing at her sore chest, Kira tried the key in the ignition, only to have the starter making an ominous clicking noise.

"Why the hell did you do that?" Conner was holding the side of his head, having banged it against the passenger side window. "Was there a tyrannodrone in the middle of the road or something?"

"Something ran in front of the jeep, and now the battery is dead."

"Are you kidding me?"

"Nope," Kira slammed her hands on the wheel. Neither of them wanted to get out, and pop the hood. The two Dino rangers keenly aware of their surroundings, and as they sat there they could feel the hairs rising on the back of their necks. Something else was at play.

"I'll call Erica, and see if she can have one of the others come out to pick us up."

"Good idea." Conner took out the device, and tapped at the screen. The Nokia was dead, flashing once as it powered down, and went out.

"What? You have got to be kidding me."

"Is something wrong?" Conner shoved his cell phone back in his pocket, and kicked at the carpeted well under his feet.

"The battery in my cell phone just died."

"I thought you charged it?"

"I did." The light of a full moon was just starting to rise above the hillside, its yellow light illuminating the tall grass on either side of the driveway. Swallowing heavily, Conner stabbed at the power locks, and leaned on the door.

"Pop the hood, and I'll see what's going on. One of the cables probably popped loose. I'll stick it back on, and we'll get back to the house."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I mean-" Conner froze as his sharp eyes picked out the shadow of something large standing in front of the jeep. "What is that?"

Zeroing in on the shape, they realized that it was walking towards them. They could hear the soft thumping of its steps, judging by the pace the animal was trotting. When it was less than ten feet from the vehicle it stopped, and shifted so that it was looking at them. Both teens felt the air charge with some unseen energy, their hearts skipping a beat as two pinpoints of light appeared in the darkness. Instinct to them they were looking at the creature's eyes. Casually, Conner reached under the seat for the heavy steel tire iron Adam carried for emergencies. He'd found it earlier while rummaging around on the floor, after dropping his cell phone. His long fingers had only just closed around the weapon, when the SUV roared back into life revealing the pointed face of a tawny wolf, and it wasn't ten feet away. The animal was mere inches from the front bumper, and was the size of a large steer.

"Oh my God…" Kira glanced over at her teammate, and then back at the enormous canine. "You see that thing?"

"Uh-huh." The red and yellow Dino rangers pressed back in their seats as the wolf gently rose up on its hind legs, and rested its massive paws on the hood. The animal leaning forward until it was looking directly at them through the windshield. Its breath leaving tiny pinpoints of steam on the glass as it started at the two teenagers with piercing orange eyes. Unable to do anything except sit there, they watched as the wolf studied them before hopping down, and easily wading through the canal on the left side of the driveway. Its body melting into nothingness as it strode into the long shadows.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!" Kira threw the SUV into gear, and floored in the rest of the way down the muddy track. Conner hanging on for dear life as they bounced over the ruts, occasionally glancing back to make sure the animal wasn't chasing them.

"Okay, that was fucking weird." The green Pathfinder ground to a stop in the gravel parking lot in front of the ranch house. "Did you see the size of that thing?"

"Oh yeah, I saw it."

"Guess we're in the right place."

The two teens had seen the animal before, courtesy of a previous run-in. Although, this was the first time they had ever seen one up close. Usually, the wolves stayed back at least a good ten feet, if not more.

"Leave to Erica and Dr. O to have their own personal pack of giant wolves."

"I don't exactly think they wanted them, besides they only show up when Dr. O has managed to hurt himself. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that was the same one we saw last year." While poking around the older man's property in California, Conner and Kira had run across a similar beast. The large canine had tracked the teens while they walked through the woods next to Tommy's house. Coming within thirty yards of the two rangers, the wolf had treated them to a piercing, blue-eyed stare, before veering off into the brush.

"You think the others know about them?"

"You were there when Jason saw the one lope across the lawn in front of us, right?" All four Dino rangers were sitting on Tommy's front porch with the emergency room physician, when one of the creatures ran out of the woods. According to Jason, the wolves were harmless, despite their massive size, and would leave once Tommy recovered.

"Yeah," replied Kira. "Like I said, I don't like the timing of any of this." Getting out of the SUV, they grabbed their bags, and made for the house. A row of vehicles were parked around the edge of the driveway, and judging by the color scheme it was obvious they belonged to the older rangers. The rainbow of colors illuminated by bluish floodlights that lit up the entire perimeter of the property, with cameras stationed all around the house on poles.

"You know, Billy did say that if we knew what was going on, we'd be in 'terrible danger'."

"We're in terrible danger now," said Conner. "The only difference is that they know what that danger is, and whether or not it's going to rip out our guts. I don't know about you, but I'm not okay with that."

"Yeah, gut-ripping tends to be a bad thing."

"I know, right?" Heading inside, they shrugged off their jackets and shoes, dumped their bags in the entryway, and strolled into the living room. Tommy and Erica's house was ranger central. What had started out as a small intimate gathering for the purpose of debriefing; had turned into an ad hoc reunion. Adam, Jason, Kim, Zack, Tanya, Rocky, Billy, Aisha, Ethan, Erica, and Trent were holed up in the large brown house. The teens packed in tight as they angled for space on the couch, across from the futon that doubled as the songstress' bed. Conner and Kira were still shaken from their run-in with the giant wolf, but unless it showed up on the lawn, or became thirty-feet tall with the intent to flatten Tucson they weren't giving it a second thought. Frankly, between ninjas and Neanderthal canines they were feeling a bit worn.

"Did you get everything you needed?" Erica was lounging on the futon that doubled as her bed, her dog curled up at the end on Jason's lap. She was dressed in all black, her blonde hair hanging in loose waves that framed her owlish face. Dark circles ringed her eyes, and she was smoking in between sips of Mike's Hard Lemonade.

"Yeah," said Conner yawning, "We should be good for a couple of days." Now that everyone was there, the atmosphere had changed from lighthearted to serious. Sitting up, Erica folded her legs underneath of herself, and peered around the room.

"I know most of us have already met, but for those who haven't – everyone this is Conner, Kira, Ethan, and Trent. Conner, Kira, Ethan, and Trent, this is everyone else."

"Hi."

"I think we've met," said Jason, pointing at Kira and Conner. "You two were the ones who crawled in through Tommy's window."

"Yep, by the way nice Tornado Kick."

"Thanks." For while, they just sat there, Erica's raspy voice settling over them like the desert's dry heat.

"There's a lot of history in this room tonight," the older woman staring down into the half-empty depths of her warming beer. "I don't doubt that any of you would give your right arm for him, but we're not asking for an arm. If you decide to go in on this with us tonight, after we tell you what you're up against, the price could be your life."

"Does this have anything to do with Mega Force, and the psycho carving up the countryside?" Conner asked pointedly, looking covetously at the beer in Erica's hand. Noting his gaze, she passed him one of the bottles, and nodded at Zack.

"Think you can look the other way?"

"I didn't see anything."

"Thanks, now as I was saying-"

"Admiral Malkor is not a factor in this situation." Aisha clarified. "I know that seems to be the logical conclusion, but in this case its simply good timing."

"Which sounds crazy, I know," Billy looking over at Rocky who was shaking his head disapprovingly. "No one likes an alien invasion, but at the moment its keeping the bad guys distracted. If they're busy worrying about the Council of Light, they're not going to be worrying about us."

"Who are we up against?" Kira pouting as Conner held his beer away from her. "I gave you scotch."

"That tasted like it was fermented in an inner tube."

"You can each have ONE beer," said Erica, holding up her index finger. "And that's how scotch is _supposed _to taste until you're old enough to really enjoy it."

"And when is that?"

"When you're twenty-one, and to answer the rest of your question – yes. My brother's situation has _everything _to do with what's going on in Tucson, but to be frank that is the least of our problems right now."

"I know," said Conner quietly. "I realize there are people in this room who don't think we can handle what's going on, but we've been doing a pretty good job of it so far."

"What Conner is trying to say," Ethan looking over at his teammate, who nodded slightly. "Is that we know Dr. O is sick."

"He told us when he fell off the roof," supplied Kira. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the reason those guys were able to take him down, is because he has one foot in the grave."

"There's more to it than that." Jason remarked sourly. "Although, I have to say you're pretty damned close. However, the fact remains that a life is a lot to ask."

"Not for him."

"Okay then," said Erica, leaning back on the futon's pillows. "We'll tell you what's going on, and then you tell us what you're going to do."

"Are we seriously going to do this?" Rocky twisted his face into a scowl, and stared expectantly at Jason who shrugged. His brown eyes following his successor has he grabbed his coat, and strode out the sliding glass doors into the backyard.

"Let him go." Adam drawled, nodding at Tanya who'd risen to go after him. "He'll come around, or he won't."

"Agreed," said Jason, using his 'command' voice. "What we are about to tell you, does not leave this room. Whether you're in with us or not, you keep your mouths shut. Got it?"

"Got it," said the Dinos in unison.

"How much has my brother told you about our people?" Erica sat up, and stared intently at the four teens. "Has he ever shared anything about our heritage, or beliefs?"

"Not much, except for campfire stories about a talking coyote." Ethan recalling his former leader's various winding tales about the legendary trickster. "Usually, whenever we were on a field trip." Erica smiled, her long fingers snaking out to scratch at Rambo's ears as the old mutt crawled up onto her legs.

"Did he ever tell you any that were scary?" Conner, Ethan, Kira, and Trent exchanged looks. Tommy had never been one for scaring teenagers with cheesy fabrications; instead he stuck to ones that were real.

"A lot, but some of those were from off-world. Why?"

"Our people have a story, one shared by those who have walked these lands for centuries. The Ute, Navajo, Apache, and Hopi all believe in the existence of an evil being called a Skinwalker."

"Are you seriously about to tell us that this creature is real?"

"Yes." Trent had a dubious look on his face, along with Ethan, but it quickly faded when they saw that she was serious. "Most of what the gringos know is what the elders of the Four Nations decided they should know. They have the Tony Hillerman Skinwalker, but not the real one."

"Is there a difference?" Erica smiled, and popped the crinkled cap on another bottle of Mike's Hard Lemonade.

"Thousands of years ago, there was a powerful race called the Ae'shir. Not much is known about them, believe me, Billy has been researching this for years, but what we do know is that they were one of the seven founding worlds of the first Council of Light."

"For ages they lived in peace, but at some point a schism formed in their society. There was a faction who believed that their technological superiority meant that they possessed racial superiority, and that faction decided that the best course of action was to subjugate and oppress younger races."

"Naturally, this led to a civil war, and at the height of it all in order to stop that faction from wiping out nearly all the galaxy's life they detonated their own sun."

"An entire race committed suicide?"

"No, the Ae'Shir had been driven off their home world long before this happened," explained Billy. "The ones left behind were the Dark Ae'Shir, but when this happened their society split again. One half disappeared, the other colonized worlds belonging to the younger races, and evolved into a race called the Shaa'drick."

"Fifty-four thousand years ago, these beings came to Earth." Jason said in a tone somewhere between awed and serious. "For the most part, they live underground, but when they're not they look not different than you or me. Like Erica said, they wiped themselves out – for the most part. One member of the Dark Ae'shir faction survived, and came out with a new philosophy. No more than eight of their kind can exist at one time, forming what they call the 'Inner Circle'."

"The members of this circle," said Billy, making an 'o' shape with his hands. "Perpetuate the core beliefs of the ancestral Ae'Shir, and are the source of the Skinwalker legend. You see, a normal Shaa'drick can change form at-will into what the DOD classifies as an 'ordinary life-form'."

"Wait," Ethan held up his hand. "These Shaa'drick are _shape-shifters_?"

"Yes, the Skinwalker is little more than a Dark Shaa'drick." Billy looked over at Jason for reassurance, before continuing. "Through a process no one completely understands, when one of them 'turns', they must kill an immediately family member in order to generate a biological transformation that identifies them as a member of the Inner Circle."

"Twenty-seven years ago, our parents were skilled by a Skinwalker." Erica chucked her empty bottle into the nearby trash can. "Fifteen years ago, the rest of his buddies came looking for my brother, and found him."

"And several weeks ago, the same night Tommy crossed the border into Tucson, the murders started." Zack finished.

"Was it the Inner Circle that took him?" Kira asked, handing her empty bottle to Adam, who tossed it in the can with the others.

"No," said Rocky, returning from where he'd been brooding in the backyard. ""We did, because we're trying to keep him alive."

"Wait, what?" Conner stared at the other rangers incredulously. No wonder they wanted to keep them out.

"We took him, because we didn't want the Circle to know he was receiving treatment."

"Were you all in on this?" Trent asked, still trying to wrap his mind around the idea that the other rangers were the ones who kidnapped and drugged his former science teacher.

"Yes," said Erica. "My brother isn't dying from a brain tumor, he has a parasite lodged in the back of his skull that the Inner Circle put there when he was sixteen."

"Wait, Dr. O-"

"- has been lied to by everyone in this room for the last fifteen years, and that includes our adoptive family."

"Why the hell would you do that? Why not just take it out of him when he was sixteen?"

"I did," Jason pinched the bridge of his nose, and took several calming breaths. "I cut it out of him the night it took control, and tried to kill us, but what I didn't get bored in deeper where it started growing back."

"Although, that is about to change," said Erica, a slow smile spreading across her owlish face. "When we took him, we had him treated, and in the next couple of days he'll be worm-free. The only problem is that when that happens –"

"He'll figure it all out." Conner looked around the room. "Why didn't you just tell him from the get-go? Why keep him in the dark?"

"Because the parasite those animals infected him with is alive, with the ability to take control of his mind. In order to keep it dormant, we had to shut down every scrap of knowledge connected to its existence, and to do that we had to wipe his memory."

"Why did these creatures come after you again?" Kira demanded. "Why is it that no matter where you go, some sick weirdo has to come along, and screw with the two of you?"

"Simple," said Erica, looking up at the teens. Her skin turning a shocking white, before giving way to a mask of heavy black lines. "We're not human beings."

To Be Continued…

THIS STORY CONTINUES IN 'THE HIDDEN WORLD' WHICH IS NOW UP HERE ON FANFICTION! FOLLOW THE NEXT PART THERE!


End file.
